Learn Physics with Functional Programming

25ELECTRIC FIELD

In the 1800s, Faraday and Maxwell discovered a new way to think about electric (and magnetic) phenomena that forms the basis for today’s electromagnetic theory. In this 19th century view, one particle does not directly apply a force to another particle, as Coulomb’s law would imply. Instead, one particle creates an electric field that applies a force to the second particle.

We’ll start this chapter with a short discussion of exactly what an electric field is. Then, we’ll show how to calculate the electric field produced by each of the charge distributions we studied in the previous chapter. We’ll begin with the electric field ...