ELECTROMAGNETISM

The Greeks were the first to discover

electricity about 2500 years ago. They found
that when a piece of amber was rubbed with
other materials it would attract small objects
such as dried leaves, or straw. The Greeks word
for amber is electron. The word electric was
derived from it and meant "to be like amber."
The Greeks also knew that some naturally occurring
“stones” (magnetite) would attract iron. From these
modest origins grew the sciences of electricity and
magnetism, which developed for centuries, until
1820 in fact, when Hans Christian Oersted
accidentally found a connection between them: an
electric current in a wire can deflect
a magnetic compass needle.
 New science of Electromagnetism was
developed further by Michael Faraday.

James Clerk Maxwell put faraday’s ideas into

mathematical form, introduced many ideas of his
own, and put electromagnetism on a sound
theoretical basis.
 The development of classical electromagnetism did not
end with Maxwell. Oliver Heaviside and especially H.A.
Lorentz contributed substantially to the clarification of
Maxwell’s theory.

Heinrich Hertz took a great step forward when,

more than 20 years after Maxwell set up his theory, he
produced in the laboratory electromagnetic “Maxwellian
waves” of a kind that we would now call radio waves.
 Guglielmo Marconi and others developed
practical applications of the
electromagnetic waves of Maxwell and
Hertz.
Albert Einstein based his relativity
theory on Maxwell’s equations.
ELECTRIC CHARGE
 The electrical neutrality of most
objects in our world conceals their
content of enormous equal amounts of
positive and negative electrical charges.
Only when this electrical balance is
disturbed does nature reveal to us the
effects of that imbalance. When we say
that a body is “charged”, we mean that is
has a charge imbalance.
 Charges of the same sign repel
each other and charges of the
opposite signs attract each other.
The positive and negative labels for
electric charge are due to Benjamin
Franklin.
 Electrical forces between
charged bodies have many
industrial applications, among
them: electrostatic paint
spraying and powder coating,
fly ash precipitation, non-
impact ink jet printing and
photocopying.
CONDUCTORS AND
INSULATORS
 Conductors
-are materials where charges can
easily flow through. Common examples
of conductors are tap water, human
body and metals in general.
 Insulators
-inhibit the flow of electric
charges. The charges stay where they
are put. Examples of this are glass,
chemically pure water and plastics.
Hall Effect shows that it is the
negative charges (electrons) that are free
to move.

Conduction/Free electrons are the

outer electron that do not remain
attached to the individual atoms of a
material but become free to wander about
within the rigid lattice structure formed
by the immobile positively charged ion
cores.
 Semiconductors, such as germanium and
silicon are materials that are intermediate between
conductors and insulators. One property of it that
makes them so useful is that the density of
conducting electrons can be drastically changed by
small changes in the conditions of the material, or
by varying the amount of applied voltage,
temperature, or the intensity of light incident on
the material.
The charge of one electron is
- 1.60 x10 coulomb.
-19

The charge of the proton is

+1.60 x10 -19 coulomb.
COULOMB’S LAW
 Charles Augustin de Coulomb
measured electrical attractions
and repulsions quantitatively and
deduced the law that governs
them.
Coulomb’s Law generally holds
only for charged objects whose
sizes are much smaller than the
distance between them. We
often say that it only holds for
point charges. It states that
“The force of attraction or
repulsion between two charges is
proportional to both of the
charges and inversely
proportional to the square of the
distance that separates them”.
Where:

q1 and q2 = interacting charges

r = distance between the charges

Sample problems:
 Two fixed charges, +1.07µC and -3.28µC are 61.8 cm apart.
Where may a third charge be located so that no net force acts
on it?

 Two free point charges +q and +4q are at a distance L apart. A

third charge is so placed that the entire system is in
equilibrium. Find the sign, magnitude and location of the third
charge.
ELECTRIC FIELD
The “alteration in space”
caused by a stationary
charge is called its
electric field and any
other charge is thought of
as interacting with the
field and not directly with
the charge that give rise
to it.
 An electric field is a force field that exists
whenever an electric force acts on a charge. The
electric field E at a point in space is therefore
defined as the ratio between the force F on a charge
q at that point and the magnitude of Q.

E = F/Q
( expressed in newton per coulomb)
 Once we know what the electric field E
is at some point, from the definition we see
that the force that the field exerts on a
charge Q at that point is:

F = QE
 Using Coulomb’s Law to determine the
magnitude of the electric field around a single
charge Q, the force F that Q exerts upon a test
charge q at the distance r away is determined by:

Fe = kQq / r²
Since E = F / q by definition, we have

E = F/q = kQ/r² (Electric Field of a charge)

When more than one charge contributes to

the electric field at a point P, the net field E is
the vector sum of the fields of the individual
charges. That is, Et = E1 + E2 + E3 + ……
 Sample Problems:
 Two charges, Q1 =+2x10-8 C and Q2 =+3x10-8 , are 50 cm
apart. What is the electric field halfway between them?

Answer: 1.4 x105 N/C towards Q1

 Where is the electric field equal to zero in the
neighborhood of the charges in the previous example?

Answer: 22.50 mm from the charge Q1

ELECTRICITY
 ELECTRIC CURRENT

Electric current is a flow of electric charge through a

medium. This flowing electric charge is typically carried by
moving electrons in a conductor such as wire. It can also be
carried by ions in an electrolyte, or, it can be carried by both
ions and electrons in a plasma.

The SI unit for measuring the rate of flow of electric

charge is the ampere, which is charge flowing through some
surface at the rate of one coulomb per second.
 The conventional symbol for current is I, which may
seem puzzling. The I symbol was used by André-Marie
Ampère himself, after whom the unit of electric current
is named, in formulating the eponymous Ampère's
force law which he discovered in 1820. The notation
travelled from France to England where it became
standard, although at least one journal did not change
from using C to I until 1896.
 VOLTAGE
V o l ta g e i s el ec t ri c p o t en t ial en erg y p er u ni t c ha rg e,
m easu re d i n jo ul es p e r c o ul om b ( = v ol t s). It is o f t en
ref er red t o as " el e c t ric p ot e nt i al " , w hic h th en m us t be
d is ti ng u is hed f r om el e c t ric p o te nt i al e ner g y b y no t in g
t ha t th e " po t en t ia l " i s a " p er- u ni t - c h arg e" qu ant i t y. Li ke
m e c ha ni c al po t en t ia l en erg y , t he z er o o f p o t en t ial c an b e
c ho se n at a ny poi n t, so t he di f f e renc e i n v o l t ag e i s t h e
qu an ti t y whi c h i s phy si c al l y m ean in g f ul . T h e d if f e ren c e in
v ol t ag e m e asu re d w hen m o vi ng f ro m p oi nt A t o p oi nt B is
eq ual t o t h e wo rk w hi c h w ou l d hav e t o b e d o ne , p e r un it
c har ge , ag ai ns t t he el ec t ric f i el d t o m o ve t h e c h arg e
f ro m A t o B.
Formulas:
V = W/Q
Volt(Alessandra Volta) = (joule/coulomb)

I = Q/T
Ampere(Andre Marie Ampere) = (coulomb per second)
 Electrical resistance, R
-opposition to flow of charges (current)
Classifications:
1. Resistance offered by the conducting wire
2. Resistance of any electric load
-> appliances, devices, gadgets
Ohm's Law was named after Bavarian mathematician and
physicist Georg Ohm.

Ohm's Law can be stated as mathematical equations, all

derived from the same principle. In the following equations,

   V = IR  (Voltage =Current multiplied by Resistance)

R = V / I  (Resistance = Voltage divided by Current)

 I = V / R  (Current = Voltage Divided by Resistance)

 Factors affecting a wire’s
resistance
-Length of wire: R𝜶L

-Cross-sectional area: R 1 A
𝜶

-Temperature: R 𝜶 T

-Nature of the material of the wire is made of ( resistivity ,

PR )
Formulas:

Rwire = ρR L
A

R = Ro [ 1 + 𝜶∆T ]
END