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Field lines depicting the electric field created by a positive charge (left), negative charge (center), and uncharged object (right). A field line is a graphical visual aid for visualizing vector fields. It consists of an imaginary integral curve which is tangent to the field vector at each point along its length.
The field is depicted by electric field lines, lines which follow the direction of the electric field in space. The induced charge distribution in the sheet is not shown. The electric field is defined at each point in space as the force that would be experienced by an infinitesimally small stationary test charge at that point divided by the charge.
The Stark effect is the shifting and splitting of spectral lines of atoms and molecules due to the presence of an external electric field. It is the electric-field analogue of the Zeeman effect, where a spectral line is split into several components due to the presence of the magnetic field. Although initially coined for the static case, it is ...
In electromagnetism, electric flux is the total electric field that crosses a given surface. [1] The electric flux through a closed surface is equal to the total charge contained within that surface. The electric field E can exert a force on an electric charge at any point in space. The electric field is the gradient of the electric potential.
This analogy is usually invoked when discussing the continuity equation, the divergence of the field and the divergence theorem. The analogy sometimes includes swirls and saddles for points that are neither of the two. In the case of electric fields the idea of flow is replaced by field lines and the sources and sinks are electric charges.
In electrodynamics, when time-varying fields are present, the electric field cannot be expressed only as a scalar potential. Instead, the electric field can be expressed as both the scalar electric potential and the magnetic vector potential. [2] The electric potential and the magnetic vector potential together form a four-vector, so that the ...
With this definition the dipole direction tends to align itself with an external electric field (and note that the electric flux lines produced by the charges of the dipole itself, which point from positive charge to negative charge, then tend to oppose the flux lines of the external field). Note that this sign convention is used in physics ...
Electric field lines are useful for visualizing the electric field. Field lines begin on positive charge and terminate on negative charge. They are parallel to the direction of the electric field at each point, and the density of these field lines is a measure of the magnitude of the electric field at any given point.