Electric Force, fundamental forces
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October 08, 2016 |
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Electric Force
•One of the four
fundamental forces
•Responsible for much of
our technology
•Governs chemistry which
deals with interactions of the outer electrons between atoms or groups of atoms
•Interesting topic because
it also involves the concept of magnetism
•We are all familiar with
static electricity
•When the humidity is low,
we can walk across a carpet wearing leather-soled shoes and give someone a big
awakening
•What is happening here?
•Transferring some entity
into our fingertips
•We now know that
elementary particles like the electron and proton have a quality known as charge.
•Objects that accumulate
charge have either gained or lost electrons
These objects experience large forces as a
result of being “charged'"
•There are two kinds of
charges which we have called positive and negative
•We have defined the charge
of the electron to be negative and the charge of the proton to be positive
•What it is interesting is
that “Like charges repel and
unlike charges attract!”
•Earlier we studied some
conservation laws that turned out to be very important
•The conservation of
energy, linear momentum and angular momentum have major consequences for the
way the world behaves
Electric charge is also a conserved quantity
and for every positive charge there seems to be a corresponding negative charge
Conservation of Charge
•In any
process, the net amount of electric charge produced is zero!
•This means that if we add
up all the positive charges and all the negative charges moving around in a
process, the total charge will sum to zero
•So we can neither create
nor destroy charge
•Charged objects are
composed of atoms, a few of which have either gained or lost an electron
•Those special atoms are
called ions
•On a macroscopic level,
ions eventually gain or lose an electron from contact with something else and
return to neutral status
•Materials
such as metals conduct electricity
•This
means that charges can move freely through
the material (electrons do the
moving)
•Other
materials, such as wood or glass do not
conduct electricity
•Electrons
cannot move freely in these materials
•Materials
such as metals conduct electricity
•This
means that charges can move freely through
the material (electrons do the
moving)
•Other
materials, such as wood or glass do not
conduct electricity
•Electrons
cannot move freely in these materials
•A few materials fall
somewhere between these two
extremes and are called semiconductors
•Examples are silicon and
germanium
•The key is whether or not
the electrons in the
material are tightly bound to individual atoms
To read more about this topic click here.
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