Physics Assignment Help >> Electrostatics Physics

Electrostatics is that important field of physics or science that deals with the properties and phenomena of stationary electric charges or slow-moving electric charges without acceleration. Almost everyone in this world is well known with electricity as a source of power. Pressing a switch will turn on the bulb or an electric heater .In all these processes energy is continuously being produced. This energy is carried by the electric current through the conducting metal wires connected to an electricity supply. The electric current is nothing but flow of moving electrons. But now you might be thinking if the electrons flow through the conducting wire why we are not able to see them, it is because size of electrons are very small and they flow through the conducting material without disturbing its physical structure Electrons carry electric charge and because of this forces are created, which are called electric forces, that push electrons along the wire. A charged particle may be moving or stationary but the electric force on a charged particle is the same whether it is stationary or moving. In electrostatics, we will study about the electric forces acting on stationary charges, and the effects of presence of matter on these forces. Same as gravitational forces, there exists an electrical force of attraction between two charged particles only when they are separated by a vacuum. The electrostatic force also follows the same inverse square variation with distance as the gravitational force. However, gravitational and electrostatic forces are not the same; there exist some differences between them. There are two very important differences between electrostatic and gravitational forces. The first difference is that in case of gravitational force, the nature of the force acting between two masses is always attractive, whereas in case of electrostatic forces, as charges may be positive or negative and we know that same kind of charges repel each other and opposite charges attract, so the nature of force may be attractive or repulsive. The second difference is that electrostatic forces are much stronger as compared to gravitational forces on an atomic scale. Coulomb's law is the fundamental equation of electrostatics which describes the force between two point charges which are separated by vacuum. According to Coulomb's law the magnitude of the electrostatic force between two point electric charges which are denoted by Q₁ and Q₂ is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each charge and inversely proportional to the surface area of a sphere whose radius is equal to the distance separating the two charges. Coulomb's force F is given by