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Electrostatics is a branch of physics that studies slow-moving or stationary electric charges. Since classical times , it has been known that some materials, such as amber , attract lightweight particles after rubbing .
The electrostatic force experienced by , according to Newton's third law, is =. If both charges have the same sign (like charges) then the product q 1 q 2 {\displaystyle q_{1}q_{2}} is positive and the direction of the force on q 1 {\displaystyle q_{1}} is given by r ^ 12 {\textstyle {\widehat {\mathbf {r} }}_{12}} ; the charges repel each other.
Faraday's ice pail experiment is a simple electrostatics experiment performed in 1843 by British scientist Michael Faraday [1] [2] that demonstrates the effect of electrostatic induction on a conducting container. For a container, Faraday used a metal pail made to hold ice, which gave the experiment its name. [3]
In classical electrostatics, the electrostatic field is a vector quantity expressed as the gradient of the electrostatic potential, which is a scalar quantity denoted by V or occasionally φ, [1] equal to the electric potential energy of any charged particle at any location (measured in joules) divided by the charge of that particle (measured ...
Earnshaw's theorem states that a collection of point charges cannot be maintained in a stable stationary equilibrium configuration solely by the electrostatic interaction of the charges. This was first proven by British mathematician Samuel Earnshaw in 1842. It is usually cited in reference to magnetic fields, but was first applied to ...
Electric field from positive to negative charges. Gauss's law describes the relationship between an electric field and electric charges: an electric field points away from positive charges and towards negative charges, and the net outflow of the electric field through a closed surface is proportional to the enclosed charge, including bound charge due to polarization of material.
Authors usually derive magnetism from electrostatics when special relativity and charge invariance are taken into account. The Feynman Lectures on Physics (vol. 2, ch. 13–6) uses this method to derive the magnetic force on charge in parallel motion next to a current-carrying wire.
The electric displacement field "D" is defined as +, where is the vacuum permittivity (also called permittivity of free space), E is the electric field, and P is the (macroscopic) density of the permanent and induced electric dipole moments in the material, called the polarization density.