B.

Tech Physics Course NIT Jalandhar

electrostatics Lecture 1

Dr. Arvind Kumar

Physics Department
e.mail. : iitd.arvind@gmail.com
 Electrostatics : In electrostatics we shall study the
phenomenon's of electricity due to charges at rest or slowly
moving. We shall find the electric force between two charges,
electric field of charge, electric potential . This is also known as
static electricity

 Electrostatic phenomenon occur due to build up of charge on the

surface of one object due to contact with some other surface

Normally objects made of atoms are neutral (equal amount of

positive and negative charge)
However, when rubbed it may be that some charge transferred from
one surface to other
Examples:

Plastic wrap to our hand when removed from some package

Attraction of pieces of papers by a comb rubbed with hair

 The charged object on the left induces charges
on the surface of an insulator.

The Comb attract the bits of paper

because the charges are displaced in the
paper.
 Some introduction to Vector Algebra

Scalar quantity: The Physical quantities which have only

magnitude and no directions are known as scalar quantity

Scalar field : If the scalar quantity has value at every point of

space i.e. it is function of space co-ordinates (x,y,z) then it is
said to represent a scalar field
e.g. the temperature, electric potential

Vector quantity: The Physical quantities which have both

magnitude and direction and also obey some transformation rules
are known as vector quantities

Vector field: If the vector quantity has value at every point of

space then it is said to represent a vector field
e.g. Electric field E (x,y,z) , magnetic field B(x,y,z) etc
Vector operations:
Addition of two vectors:

(i ) Commutative in nature

(ii) Associative :

Multiplication by scalar: Multiplication just change the

magnitude of vector
 Dot product of two vectors:
If two vectors are perpendicular then their dot product will be zero
Dot product is commutative

Distributive in nature
 Cross product of two vectors:

Here n is unit vector perpendicular to plane containing vectors A and B

But there are two directions perpendicular to plane...

So use Right Hand Thumb rule

Cross product is distributive in nature

Cross product is not commutative

Geometrically cross product of two vectors gives us the area of

parallelogram whose sides are formed by the two given vectors
Vectors in component
form:
Any vector A can be expressed as

Here are unit vectors along x, y and z directions

and also known as basis vectors.

are components of vectors and geometrically they give

us the projection of vector along x, y and z directions respectively.

So if you want to add the two vectors just add their like components
 To multiply by a scalar just multiply each component by that scalar

Thus to find dot product just multiply like components and then add those

If two vectors are same

Magnitude of vector
Cross product in component form

Unit vector
Components of 1st vector
Components of 2nd vector

Just take determinant of above matrix

Triple Product

Scalar Triple Product

Geometrically the scalar triple product gives us the volume of a

Parallelepiped whose base is formed by and height is
given by

In component form

Dot and cross can be interchanged

Meaningless expression

Cross product of scalar by vector

Scalar vector
meaningless
Vector triple product

More formulas:
Position vector of some point in Cartesian form

Magnitude

Unit vector in direction of position vector

 Infinitesimal displacement vector from

is
  Separation vector :

In Cartesian co-ordinates it

becomes
 Spherical Polar Co-ordinates

Distance of point P from the origin

Angle made by the position vector with z-axis
zenith angle
Angle made by the projection of position vector
in xy plane with the x-axis, Azimuthally angle

Relation to Cartesian co-ordinates

Some vector A

Unit vectors in spherical

coordinates
 Infinitesimal length element in spherical coordinates

In direction

In direction

In direction

In general, Infinitesimal length element

Infinitesimal volume element

Area element ,
When r is constant

When is constant

Range of co-ordinates

Volume of sphere using spherical co-

ordinates
 Differential Calculus
Ordinary Derivative: How rapidly function f(x) changes for a small
change dx in x :

For a change dx in x , f changes by amount df and

proportionality factor (df/dx) is known as derivative

If f changes slowly then derivative will be small (see fig (a))
If f changes rapidly then derivative will be large (see fig(b))

Geometrically derivative gives us the slope of graph of f

versus x
Gradient: Let us consider some scalar function
We want to know how function changes with change in the
co-ordinates (x, y, z) ?
Suppose for a small change dx, dy and dz in x, y and z
respectively, scalar function changes by
Using theorem of partial derivative we can write,

……………(1)

Above eqn can be written as,

= .

= ……………(2)
 In Eqn 2, ……………(3)
is known as gradient of scalar function . It is a vector quantity.

Geometrical interpretation of Gradient of a scalar function:

Consider a surface , C is constant

We consider some point P(x, y, z) on the surface.

Then we move through a small distance dr over the
surface to point Q

Since is constant over the surface

Therefore, from eqn (2) we get,

i.e. is perpendicular to dr
Consider two surface C1 and C2 separated by vector dr

Now if we fix dr and vary angle then

is maximum when angle is zero and hence
point in direction of dr

If gradient of scalar function vanishes

at some point then change in scalar
function will be zero for small
displacements about that point.
This point is called stationary point
of scalar function. It could be a maximum or minimum or some
saddle point
 Example:

Ans:

Above example tells us that the distance from the origin increases
most rapidly in the radial direction
 (Del Operator)

Similarly, above operator operate as:

 Divergence:

It is defined as

Note that divergence of a vector field results in scalar.

Geometrically it tells us that how much the field is diverging

from a point
In fig (a) field has +ve divergence. Suppose field is represented by,

And the divergence will be

which is finite positive quantity

In fig (b) field has zero divergence.

Let field is represented by function

and its divergence is

which is zero.

•If a vector field has zero divergence then such

a vector field is known as Solenoid field.
In fig c we have finite positive divergence.

Let field is represented by function

Exercise: Find the divergence of above field

 Physical significance of divergence :

Consider compressible fluid moving

with velocity
and having density

Consider small volume element in

form of a
Parallelepiped ABCDEFGH as
shown in figure,

Along x direction,

Amount of fluid flowing into above volume per

unit time in +ve x-direction through face EFGH =
 Amount of fluid flowing out of above volume per
unit time in +ve x-direction through face ABCD =
Using Maclaurian series we can write above eqn as

Net flow along x axis = (Flow out through ABCD) – (Flow in through EFG

Similarly we can write the eqns for flow of fluid through faces which are
perpendicular to y and z directions
Therefore, net flow per unit time of fluid through the volume element is
 Net flow of fluid out of volume element dxdydz per unit
time per unit volume is =

Note: 1. If the divergence of a physical quantity is + Ve , then

there is a source of fluid inside the volume

If the divergence of a physical quantity is -Ve , then there is a

sink of fluid inside the volume

If the divergence of a physical quantity is zero then field is said

to be Solenoidal.
Curl of a Physical Quantity:
Curl of a vector quantity is defined as
The curl of a vector quantity tell us that how much the field curl
(or rotate) about the given point in the question.

If the curl of a quantity vanishes then it is said to be an irrotational field.

e.g. The electrostatic field E has curl zero

The curl of the position vector ( ) vanishes as

calculated below:
To understand more about the curl of vector field we consider the
differential loop in the xy-plane as shown in fig:

For 1st , 2nd , 3rd and 4th line integral we have

Above eq. show that the circulation in xy plane is given by the
z component of curl of field
Some Product rules to be used later:
Integral Calculus

Line integral: The line integral over some path P is defined as

In above eq. v is some vector function

and dl is the displacement vector.

If we have a closed path i.e. the initial and final positions are same then
we write

In general the value of the line integral depends upon the path followed
in moving from a to b. But there are certain class of vector functions for
which the value of the line integral depends only upon the endpoints.
Such vector fields are known as conservative fields
Surface integral: The surface integral of some vector function v is
defined as follows

where da is the small area element. The

direction is perpendicular to the surface and
for open surface there are two directions.
If we have closed surface then we
write as follows

If v represent the flow of the fluid i.e. mass flowing per unit area per
unit time then the surface integral gives us the mass flowing
per unit time and is know as flux.
Volume integral: The volume integral of some scalar function T is
defined as

where is the volume element

If we have some vector function v then we write as follows

Fundamental Theorem of calculus:

Consider a function f(x) of one variable x. The fundamental theorem of calculus

states that

----------(1)

We write the above Eq. as follows:

Above Eq. says that if we want to find the integral of some function F(x) then we
df
just need to find a function f(x) such that = F(x) and then the difference of
dx
the values of function f(x) at end points ( f(b)-f(a)) will give us the integral of the
function F(x).
Fundamental Theorem of gradients:

We consider a scalar function T(x,y,z) which depends upon three variables.

We start from some point say a and moves through displacement vector dl1.
The change in the scalar function T during this
displacement is given by

Suppose we further moves through dl2 and then dl3 and

So on.
The total change in T as we move from point a to b is
given by the integral

Above Eq. gives us the fundamental theorem of gradients. It states that the
line integral of gradient of scalar function is given by the difference of the value
of the function at the end points.
Note the following points:


Fundamental Theorem of divergences:
Gauss Theorem or divergence theorem

Above theorem states that the volume integral of the divergence of a

vector field is equal to the integral of the vector field over a closed
surface

Proof:

To prove the above theorem consider a volume V divided into

small volume elements represented by parallelepiped

Now for a single parallelepiped we can write

 If we sum over all the parallelepipeds then the contribution of
term for all internal faces cancel pair wise and only external faces have
Contribution.

Also we shall take the limit when the number of parallelepipeds

approaches infinity and dimension of each approaches zero

Which is Gauss Theorem.

 Fundamental Theorem of curls:
Stokes Theorem: The surface integral of curl of a vector field over a
region is equal to the line integral of the vector field over the
closed path

To prove the above theorem we consider a surface which is divided into a

number of small rectangles.

As discussed earlier, the circulation of fluid through the rectangle

in xy plane is given by

For one differential rectangle we can write

Now we shall sum over all rectangle. For the line integral on the
right hand side, the contribution of integral over internal line
segments cancel and only exterior line segments contributes

Considering that the number of small rectangles

approaches infinity and dimension of
rectangle approaches zero, we get

which is Stokes Theorem.