In this article, students will get revision notes on CBSE

Class 12 Physics, Chapter 1: Electric Charges and Fields.

These notes are very useful for revision purposes before
the exam.

The complete chapter is divided into several parts and this

is the Part - I.

Electrostatics
Electrostatics deals with the study of forces, fields and
potentials arising from static charges. The name electricity
is coined from the Greek word elektron meaning amber.

Important facts about Electric Charges

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The name electricity is coined from the Greek word

elektron meaning amber.

There are two kinds of charges.

By convention, the charge on electron is considered as
negative & the charge on proton is considered as positive.

If we say that a body is charged, it means body have

excess or deficit of electrons.
A body having negative charge implies that body has
excess of electrons. A body having positive charge implies
that body is deficient of electrons.

In solids, some of the electrons, being less tightly bound in

the atom, are the charges which are transferred from one
body to the other. A body can thus be charged positively
by losing some of its electrons. Similarly, a body can be
charged negatively by gaining electrons.

The SI unit of electric charge is coulomb. The c.g.s. unit of

charge is stat coulomb.

Gold - Leaf Electroscope

It is a device used to detect the nature and amount of

electric charge present in a charged body.

It consists of a vertical metal rod housed in a box, with two

thin gold leaves attached to its bottom end. When a
charged object touches the metal knob at the top of the
rod, charge flows on to the leaves and they diverge. The
degree of divergance is an indicator of the amount of
charge.

Basic Properties of Electric Charges

Additivity of Charges:
If a system contains two point chargesq1 andq2, the total
charge of the system is obtained simply by adding
algebraicallyq1 andq2 , i.e., charges add up like real
numbers or they are scalars like the mass of a body.
If a system containsnchargesq1,q2,q3, …,qn, then the total
charge of the system isq1 +q2 +q3 + … +qn.
Charge is conserved:
Within an isolated system consisting of many charged
bodies, due to interactions among the bodies, charges may
get redistributed but it is found that the total charge of the
isolated system is always conserved.

Quantisation of charge
Experimentally it is established that all free charges are
integral multiples of a basic unit of charge denoted bye.
Thus chargeqon a body is always given byq=ne, herenis any
integer, positive or negative. This basic unit of charge is
the charge that an electron or proton carries. By
convention, the charge on an electron is taken to be
negative; therefore charge on an electron is written as –
eand that on a proton as +e. (e= 1.602192 × 10 C)
–19

Methods of Charging
A body can be charged by friction, induction and
conduction.

Charging by Friction:
When certain insulators are rubbed with cloth or fur, they
become electrically charged due to the transfer or charge
or electrons. As the two objects are rubbed together, one
object loses electrons while the other gains electrons.

There is a transfer of electrons from one object to the

other. The object that gains electrons becomes negatively
charged, while the object that loses electrons has an
excess of positive charge. Hence it is positively charged.
The transfer of charge is due to the contact between the
materials, and the amount of charge transferred depends
on the nature of these materials.

Charging by Induction:
Induction is the process by which a uncharged body is
charged by using a charged body without actual contact
between them or losing its own
charge.
If a charged body is brought near a neutral body, the
charged body attracts opposite charge and repels similar
charge present on the
neutral body.
Afterwards, the neutral body is earthed and the like charge
is neutralised by the flow of charge from earth leaving
unlike charge on
the body. Now the earthing and the charging body are
removed leaving the initially neutral body charged.
Charging by Conduction:
In the process of charging by conduction, direct contact of
charged and uncharged body is involved and both objects
acquire the same kind of charge. If a negative object is
used to charge a neutral object, then both objects become
charged negatively and vice versa.

Coulomb's law
According to this law "The magnitude of the electric force
between two static point charges, in vacuum, is directly
proportional to the product of the magnitude of the two
charges and inversely proportional to the square of the
distance between them and acts along the straight line
joining the two charges".

The magnitude of Coulomb's law is given by the

expression:

Where,Fis the force between two point charges, q1 andq2 are

magnitude of charges,ris the distance between these
charges.
Some facts about Coulomb’s law:
• Coulomb's law should be used for point charges in
vacuum at rest. It is not valid for charges in motion.
• The electrostatics force acts along the line joining the
two charges. It obeys Newton's third law of motion.

• Coulomb's force is not affected by the presence of other

charges in the neighborhood; hence, the principle of
superposition is valid.

• Force between like charges is repulsive and between

unlike charges attractive.

Coulomb’s law in vector form:

Superposition Principle: