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An electric field (sometimes called E-field [1]) is a physical field that surrounds electrically charged particles. In classical electromagnetism, the electric field of a single charge (or group of charges) describes their capacity to exert attractive or repulsive forces on another charged object.
An electron generates an electric field that exerts an attractive force on a particle with a positive charge, such as the proton, and a repulsive force on a particle with a negative charge. The strength of this force in nonrelativistic approximation is determined by Coulomb's inverse square law.
As such, they are often written as E(x, y, z, t) (electric field) and B(x, y, z, t) (magnetic field). If only the electric field (E) is non-zero, and is constant in time, the field is said to be an electrostatic field. Similarly, if only the magnetic field (B) is non-zero and is constant in time, the field is said to be a magnetostatic field.
An electric field is produced when the charge is stationary with respect to an observer measuring the properties of the charge, and a magnetic field as well as an electric field are produced when the charge moves, creating an electric current with respect to this observer. Over time, it was realized that the electric and magnetic fields are ...
The electrostatic field does not contribute to the net emf around a circuit because the electrostatic portion of the electric field is conservative (i.e., the work done against the field around a closed path is zero, see Kirchhoff's voltage law, which is valid, as long as the circuit elements remain at rest and radiation is ignored [22]). That ...
Representation of the electric field vector of a wave of circularly polarized electromagnetic radiation. The electromagnetic force is the second strongest of the four known fundamental forces and has unlimited range. [17] All other forces, known as non-fundamental forces. [18] (e.g., friction, contact forces) are derived from the four ...
The electric field was formally defined as the force exerted per unit charge, but the concept of potential allows for a more useful and equivalent definition: the electric field is the local gradient of the electric potential. Usually expressed in volts per metre, the vector direction of the field is the line of greatest slope of potential, and ...
Electric charges produce electric fields. [2] A moving charge also produces a magnetic field. [3] The interaction of electric charges with an electromagnetic field (a combination of an electric and a magnetic field) is the source of the electromagnetic (or Lorentz) force, [4] which is one of the four fundamental interactions in physics.