AJP Volume 40 NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS ‘A Heuristic Derivation of Coulomb’s Law and the Biot-Savart Law DONALD G. BURKHARD Department of Physies and Astronomy University of Georgia Athens, Georgia 30601 (Received 9 June 1972) ‘There have recently appeared in the American Journal of Physies two pepers designed to clarify Students’ understanding and use of Gas’ law The following heuristic derivation of Coulomb's law strengthens the idea of flux fw inherent in Gauss’ law by using the idea of fux to obtain Coulomb's law. The author believes that the following spproach ean give thestudenta better grasp of Gauss’ Iw and its relation ship to Coulomb's law. Tt also emphasizes the funda rental nature of the inverse square la. "Fins, to give some visualization ofthe idea of eletrio flux, one may compare it with light energy emanating from a ight bulb or eandle. Let the strength ofa candle be I. We first note that light is given off uniformly in all directions, ‘Thus the flux or energy per unit timo, dP, flowing into an element of slid angle 2 will be given by dF = 140. Since d= dA.1/r* where dA. is the projected receiving area at the end of the cone perpendicular to 7, one can write df= [df= dAa/?. Dividing by da, we obtain dP/dAs=I/r, dP/d4. is the flax density or energy flow per unit time per unit area at dAa and is called the ifumination, Bx over d4.. The illumination over an element of area d making an angle & with 44, is B= Bx cos, With this introduction in terms of ‘subject the student can visualize one can then apply the idea to clestrie fux and give n plausible argument to obtain the interaction between electric charges. First, it s experimentally observed that two charges interact with one another. What is the possible form of the interaction? Consider a charge q. a1 can be dis- tributed over an element of area or volume but we now refer to it as point change. Charge gives out some thing which we wl ell fx through which it interacts with another charge 2. From the isotropy and homo- ‘geneity of space the fax wil be uniform inal directions ‘We assume that the arsount of fx wil bo proportional to-au. In anticipation of the final result the propor- tionality factor will be written 1/4. Thus the fux, dP, through dis B= Fide Foyd A /Axer* a where the element of flux ig written as a veetor sinee the direction of flow is long f, a unit vector along r, the displacement vector between q and qe. Now consider charge q to be distributed over the area dds. We 1868 / December 1978 assume the interaction between q1 and g2 to be pro- portional to the amount of ux from qx eoupling with 2 through the area d4s. The interaction force must be proportional to the charge density over 24., that is, it rust be proportional to /d4.. The foree has to be proportional to the charge density g/d. rather than 4, otherwise the net foree on gs would depend on how qx 5s distributed which is not observed physically and not reasonable a priori. Thus, the free is f= dP (m/dAs)=qa98/4re? @ ‘nd Coulomb's law is “deduced.” If the student asks whether the idea of flux flow from q, to ge implies « gradual loss of mass one ean point out that there will be ‘an equal amount of flux flow back to a: from g. One can now proceed to obtain Gauss! law more or Jess in the usual way as follows. In Eq. (1) we replace qt by qi 90 that gis one of many charges. The total flux from q is obtained by summing the sealar values of AaB, over all angles so that aR, (aet9/400) =4/e (aed a/4rer?) = § (gte-AA/ Aner?) =fEeda 3) where gifi/4nee? has been replaced by E;, the flux per unit ares perpendicular to x; or field strength of the ith charge. For the total fux from all particles we sum over F; and use the superposition property so one ean sum under the integral. Thus, P=DK LS (a/ trea?) dA =SL Eds E-dk= Sa (4) where E= 5° Ey is the net field at dA. The last equality in Eq. (4) is Cause’ law. ‘One may’use the same argument to obtain the gravi- tational force between two masees m; and mm A similar argument may be used to obtain the Biot-Savart nw. For example, given the current element fd, we assume the emanating flux to be proportional to tid: and to the solid angle d®. Thus the scalar value of dP, is P= (yo/ 4x) ida, with proportionslity factor jy/4x. ‘The interaction with current element isd, willbe proportional. to the amount of ids per unit receiving area perpendic-ular to r or izdh/dAs. Furthermore, since in this Caco the intarecting.eurents have dition 1s wall tomugaitude ono must allow the interaction to have tdiretona’ dependence, ‘The simplest interaction ‘hich efets the fact at ah and dare vectors iste veetor eros product xi where and i ae unit rectors along dc and dl respectively. Thus, asuming Ihe imple, modo’ of inernetion coe ean’ wate the fore, fon ad a8 the produet of the ocala? fax at ties e/a times snes x fe/4e? (nA) aly x ©) which is the Biot-Savart law. ‘Microscopic and Macroscopic Views of the ‘Brownian Motion F, LANDIS MARKLEY DAVID PARK Walliams College Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267 (Received 5 June 1972) Masklovets has proposed an apparatus whose un- intentional effet is to perpetuate an erroneous mode! of Brownian motion. His apparatus uses 8 7X7%14 min plexiglass erystal as a “Brownian partile” and 7 mm steel balls a8 “molecules.” When the “molecules” are agitated, they cause the plexiglass to move, This model demonstrates statistical fluctuations on the molecular level, but not the Brownian motion, which is due to fluetiations on the macroseopie level. Consider a Brownian particle of density 1 g/em? and 10cm diam (it can't be much less than the wavelength of visible light for the particle to be observable) sus- pended in water, whose moleoules have mass m. It is easy to caloulate that M/m=2X 10", The individual impacts of water molecules on the Brownian particle have an effect similar to those of dried peas on a battle- ship. If a water molecule traveling with speed ¢ collides with the Brownian particle, the latter recoils with « velocity on the order of (m/Bf)e. This was pointed out in 1906 by Smoluchowsli, who found that the Brownian particle would pick up 2 speed of 310 m/sec in a single collision, much less than that of the ‘observed Brownian motion? ‘According to the equipartition theorem, the mean thermal speed of the Brownian particle should be C= (m/M)}¥e which is about 0.4 em/see. Since this is Notes and Discussions ‘The above angument for the cross product should be reasonably convincing to « beginning elass. In a more general sense, of course, the interaction hias to be a tensor and the simplest tensor is an antisymmetric tensor of second rank or the oross product of dh and dil, Equations (1) and (5) together with Faraday’s law contain all of electrodynamics. The Coulomb law and the Biot-Savart law are both made plausible through the above simple arguments. Thus even the beginning student can see the simplicity of two laws which form the foundation of the bulk of classical physics. * Yitzhak ¥. Sharon, Amer, J. Phys. 40, 656 (1972) 211 Erlichson, Amer, J. Phys, $8, 1252 (1970) bout 10° times the velocity added by a single collision, and sineo the velocities add randomly, it must represent the effect of a large number of collisions, about 10", Given that the Brownian motion depends on such large number of individual atomic events, it must be considered to be a macroscopic rather than a micro- scopic phenomenon. We ean think of it as caused by fluctuations in the bulk properties of the fluid in the neighborhood of the particle, more specifically of pressure fluctuations due to statistial fluetuations in the number of molecules in a volume of order of magni- ‘tude of the volume of the Brownian particle, ‘The velocity of 0.4 em/see appears to give rise to ‘more difficulties, which are answered by Smoluchowski as follows: ‘How is this mumber [C] to be brought into agree ment with the direot measurements, which have given C= 8X 10-+em/see? This contradiction, which ‘was first noticed by F. Exner, appears atthe first glance to raise a decisive objection against the Kinetic theory. And yet the explanation is very simple. That velocity [Cis so lange that considering the required microscopic magnification, the parti cannot be followed with the eye at all. What we see is only the average position of a particle mo with that velocity, but altering the direction of its motion from 10 to 10® times per second. Its center of gravity will deseribe an extraordinarily complicated zigzag path whose rectilinear segments are of much smaller order of magnitude than the dimensions of the particle itself, and only insofar as the veotorial sum of these segments reaches a certain size in the course of time do we observe & displacement: AJP Volume 40 | 1869