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  • Electric Field for Point Charges
Topics:  Electric field, charge.

Pre-requisite skills: Knowledge of Coulomb's law.

Approximate completion time:  Half hour.

Provide sufficient detail to verify that the assignment was completed in a meaningful manner.

Applet by Wolfgang Christian
1.  This applet shows the electric field (in Newtons per Coulomb) due to a point charge located at the center of the applet.  The user can view the strength of the field and the coordinates (in centimeters) at any location (see Applet Help).

(a)   By looking at the strength of the field at a particular location, calculate the magnitude of the charge located at the center.

(b)  Using graph paper, plot the strength of the field as a function of the radial distance r from the charge.  

(c)  What is the shape of the plot in the previous question?   Explain how the shape corresponds to Coulomb's law. 

Helpful Resources

  1. Electric Charges, Fields, and Potentials by Ian Littlewood.
  2. Book of Phyz - Electric Fields by Dean Baird.
  3. The Physics Hypertextbook by Glenn Elert (see Electric Field )
  4. Physics E-Book - Projectile Motion by Fred Gram (formerly, Zogrseb, of the planet Ktoobirzp).
  5. Book of Phyz - Motion by Dean Baird
  6. P10D - Electricity and Magnetism by Janak Sodha

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