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The charge due to polarization is known as bound charge, while the charge on an object produced by electrons gained or lost from outside the object is called free charge. The motion of electrons in conductive metals in a specific direction is known as electric current.
The phenomenon of static electricity requires a separation of positive and negative charges. When two materials are in contact, electrons may move from one material to the other, which leaves an excess of positive charge on one material, and an equal negative charge on the other. When the materials are separated, they retain this charge imbalance.
The force acting on a point charge due to a system of point charges is simply the vector addition of the individual forces acting alone on that point charge due to each one of the charges. The resulting force vector is parallel to the electric field vector at that point, with that point charge removed.
The presence of charge gives rise to an electrostatic force: charges exert a force on each other, an effect that was known, though not understood, in antiquity. [ 25 ] : 457 A lightweight ball suspended by a fine thread can be charged by touching it with a glass rod that has itself been charged by rubbing with a cloth.
The volume charge density ρ is the amount of charge per unit volume (cube), surface charge density σ is amount per unit surface area (circle) with outward unit normal nĚ‚, d is the dipole moment between two point charges, the volume density of these is the polarization density P.
A point charge q in the electric field of another charge Q. The electrostatic potential energy, U E, of one point charge q at position r in the presence of a point charge Q, taking an infinite separation between the charges as the reference position, is:
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If one of the charges were to be negative in the earlier example, the work taken to wrench that charge away to infinity would be exactly the same as the work needed in the earlier example to push that charge back to that same position. This is easy to see mathematically, as reversing the boundaries of integration reverses the sign.