물리학 실험 2 (036)

김태훈 조교님
2021-12309 김서현 기계공학부
작성일자 26.09.22
 Coulomb’s Law
Experiment 1. Investigation of Coulomb’s Law by exploring the force between two charges

Abstract
This experiment aims to verify Coulomb’s Law by conducting three experiments each varying
voltage produced by the power supply, the separation distance of the conducting plates and the
material of the dielectric plate respectively. Mainly, the directly proportional quadratic
relationship between the force produced by the conducting plates and the voltage produced by
the power supply, and the inversely proportional quadratic relationship between the force
produced by the conducting plates and the separation distance of the conducting plates is
experimentally verified.

1. Introduction

1.1 Experimental Purpose

The purpose of the experiment is to verify
Coulomb’s law through analysis of the
relationship between the force of a parallel
capacitor and the voltage between the two
conducting plates. Three experiments are
conducted, exploring 1) the effect of varying
voltage produced by the power supply, 2)
the effect of varying separation of the
conducting plates, and 3) the effect of
varying the material of the dielectric plate,
on the force produced between the
conducting plates. As an extension, the
characteristic of capacitance is explored by
including the dielectric plates in series and
parallel.
1.2 Background Theory
1.2.1 Coulomb’s Law
When two conducting plates as shown in
Figure 1. are connected with a high voltage
power supply, charges of the same
magnitude are produced in both plates, but
in opposite sign: +q and -q. The capacitance
C [Farads] of the parallel plate capacitor is
represented by the formula:
A
C=ε 0 ,
d
where,
- ε 0: permittivity of dielectric
- A : area of plate overlap [m2]
- d : separation of the plates [m]
Moreover, capacitance is also represented as
q
C= , where q [coulombs]: charge of the
V
plate, and V [volts]: voltage supplied by the
power supply and the force F [Newtons]
experienced by charge q is given as
V
F=q .
2d

Hence, combining the known equations, and

the simple formula, F=mg, the force F
between the conducting plate can also be
[1]
represented as:
 CV
2
AV
2
Table 1. and Figure 2. represents the linear
F= =ε 0 2
=mg ( 1 ) correlation between the square of the applied
2d 2d
voltage and the mass on balance as shown
on the electronic balance. Using equation 1,
1.2.2 Capacitors in series and parallel it is calculated that voltage and force (mg)
follows the proportional relationship:
2
The total capacitance, Ctot of two capacitors F∝V
with capacitances C1 and C2 is given as the Figure 2. indicates the linear approximation
equations below for two case: connected in in numerical form: y=0.5296x-0.0429 g.
series and in parallel, respectively. Rearranging equation 1, this shows that the
gradient of the graph line in Figure 2 is
1 1 1 given by the equation:
= + ( series ) (2)
Ctot C 1 C 2 m A
gradient 2 =ε 2
V 0 2d g
Ctot=C 1+C 2 ( ¿ ) (3)
For this experiment, the R2 value is 0.9987.
Hence, this shows that the direct
proportional relationship satisfies
significantly well and has a percentage error
2. Experimental Data and Analysis of 1.3%. Therefore, the accuracy of the
of Results experiment is incredibly high. However,
only one trial was completed and so no
Experiment 1: Voltage supplied by power repeats and average values are taken into
supply account. This limits the reliability of the
experiment.

Experiment 2: Separation distance between

conducting plates
 Experiment 2 investigates the linear The gradient of the linear approximation of
approximation between the inverse squared air as the dielectric is 0.5296 whereas it is
separation and mass on balance: 1.5948 for acrylic as the dielectric. Since A,
1 d and g in equation 1. Are constants, the
F∝ 2
d ratio of the gradient represents the ratio of
Figure 3. indicates the numerical linear the permittivity of the two materials used.
approximation: y=74.589x+0.1956 (g) with Hence,
a R2 value of 0.9965. This shows 3.5% error
which indicates a strong directly 1.5948
ratio= ≈ 3.011
proportional relationship although not as 0.5296
strong as the relationship in Experiment 1.
Therefore, the permittivity of the acrylic
used in the experiment can also be found by:
Experiment 3: Varying dielectric material
ε acrylic=ratio × ε air [Farad/m]
The effect of the dielectric material was
¿ 3.011∗1.0006 Farad/m
investigated in this section of the experiment
¿ 3.013Farad/m
by inserting a thin layer of acrylic in
between the conducting plates. Table 3 was
Experiment 4: Capacitors in parallel
first recorded and the data calculated and
was used to produce Figure 4.

As part of the last section to this experiment,

the effect of connecting capacitors in
parallel was investigated by placing a layer
of glass dielectric above the previous acrylic
layer. As the separation, d, doubled in
length, the gradient of the linear
approximation graph for the parallel
connection was multiplied by 4 to produce a
comparable figure. The numerical linear
approximation for the mass on balance for
the connection in parallel is: y =
2.5612x+9.219. Hence, the gradient is
2.5612. Therefore, equation 3 can be
verified using the gradients of the separate
linear approximation of each dielectric
material. This cannot be proven as the trials
using only the glass dielectric was not
conducted.
3. Possible Errors and Evaluation
Evaluation of possible errors in verifying the
precession and nutation of a gyroscope
undergoing horizontal circular motion.
- Lag time: time was required between
measurements to allow the electronic
balance to adjust to the new value.
This took longer as the mass change
increased with higher voltage
supplied. This is a significant error as
due to time restriction, it was
difficult to take into account all the
lag time. Moreover, the lag time
increased with greater voltage
supplied. This suggests that the
uncertainty caused by lag time is
unequally distributed, possibly
affecting the linear proportionality of
the relationship of the variables
investigated.
- Measurement errors: due to
equipment restrictions, a certain
degree of uncertainty exists for all
measurements. Especially when
recording the mass on the balance,
the value shown varies up to 10%
difference. Hence, in many trials the
highest data was recorded.
- Adjusting to parallel surface: the
conducting plate itself was not
entirely parallel. Hence, this caused
the surface of the experimental area
to lose its parallel surface. This error
is considered insignificant as it was
largely adjusted by tilting the
electronic balance.
and force, the inversely proportional
relationship between the separation
distance^2 and force, the effect of adding a
dielectric of greater permittivity, and lastly
the effect of placing two dielectric materials
in parallel was experimented and verified to
a reasonable degree in this experiment.
Experiment 1 showed 1.3% error proving
success in accuracy, experiment 2 showed
3.5% error again proving reasonable
accuracy and experiment 3 provides a
reasonable permittivity value for the acrylic
used in this experiment. However, for all the
experiments, lack of repeats and trials
diminishes the precision of the data result.
Although the result may indicate successful
accuracy with the theoretical value as
calculated, due to lack of trials, it cannot be
fully justified with great confidence.
Therefore, it is required to repeat the trials at
least three time and use the average
measurements.
5. References
[1] 서울대학교 물리천문학부, 『실험 2-1.
전하와 전하 사이의 힘』, 2017

4. Conclusion

Overall, the directly proportional

relationship between the voltage^2 produced