2. Magnetism and Electricity - Electricity, Ohm's Law, Magnetism - Physics, Science, Civil Services | RAS RPSC Prelims Preparation - Notes, Study Material & Tests - RPSC RAS (Rajasthan) PDF Download

ELECTRICITY 

A  stream  of  electrons  moving  through  a  conductor  constitutes  an  electric  current. Conventionally, the direction of current is taken opposite to the direction of flow of electrons. The SI unit of electric current is ampere. Resistance is a property that resists the flow of electrons in a conductor. It controls the magnitude of the current. The SI unit of resistance is ohm. 

OHM’S LAW 

The potential difference across the ends of a resistor is directly proportional to the current through it, provided its temperature remains the same.

The resistance of a conductor depends directly on its length, inversely on its area of cross section, and also on the material of the conductor. The equivalent resistance of several resistors in series is equal to the sum of their individual resistances.

A set of resistors connected in parallel has an equivalent resistance Rp given by:

1/Rp=(1/R1)*(1/R2)*(1/R3)  

The electrical energy dissipated in a resistor is given by

W= V*I*t

The unit of power is watt (W). One watt of power is consumed when 1A of current flows at a potential difference of 1 V. The commercial unit of electrical energy is kilowatt hour(kWh).

1kWh= 3600000 J=3.6x10⁶  J.

MAGNETISM 

Is a class of physical phenomena that includes forces exerted by magnets on other magnets. It has its origin in electric currents and the fundamental magnetic moments of elementary particles. These give rise to a magnetic field that acts on other currents and moments. All materials are influenced to some extent by a magnetic field.

A magnetic field exists in the region surrounding a magnet, in which the force of the magnet can be detected.

A compass needle is a small magnet. Its one end, which points towards north, is called a north pole, and the other end which points towards south is called a south pole.

Field lines are used to represent a magnetic field. A field line is the path along which a hypothetical free north pole would tend to move. The direction of the magnetic field at a point is given by the direction that a north pole placed at that point would take. Field lines are shown closer together where the magnetic field is greater. A metallic wire carrying an electric current has associated with it a magnetic field. The field lines about the wire consist of a series of concentric circles whose direction is given by the right hand rule.

The phenomenon of electromagnetic induction is the production of induced current in a coil placed in a region where the magnetic field changes with time.

The pattern of the magnetic field consists of a core of soft iron wrapped around with a coil of insulated copper wire.

DIAMAGNETISM

Diamagnetism appears in all materials, and is the tendency of a material to oppose an applied magnetic field, and therefore, to be repelled by a magnetic field. However, in a material with paramagnetic properties (that is, with a tendency to enhance an external magnetic field), the paramagnetic behavior dominates. Thus, despite its universal occurrence, diamagnetic behavior is observed only in a purely diamagnetic material. In a diamagnetic material, there are no unpaired electrons, so the intrinsic electron magnetic moments cannot produce any bulk effect.

In these cases, the magnetization arises from the electrons' orbital motions, which can be understood classically as follows:

When a material is put in a magnetic field, the electrons circling the nucleus will experience, in addition to their Coulomb attraction to the nucleus, a Lorentz force from the magnetic field. Depending on which direction the electron is orbiting, this force may increase the centripetal force on the electrons, pulling them in towards the nucleus, or it may decrease the force, pulling them away from the nucleus. This effect systematically increases the orbital magnetic moments that were aligned opposite the field, and decreases the ones aligned parallel to the field (in accordance with Lenz's law). This results in a small bulk magnetic moment, with an opposite direction to the applied field.

Note that all materials undergo this orbital response. However, in paramagnetic and ferromagnetic substances, the diamagnetic effect is overwhelmed by the much stronger effects caused by the unpaired electrons.

PARAMAGNETISM 

In a paramagnetic material there are unpaired electrons, i.e. atomic or molecular orbitals with exactly one electron in them. While paired electrons are required by the Pauli Exclusion Principle to have their intrinsic ('spin') magnetic moments pointing in opposite directions, causing their magnetic fields to cancel out, an unpaired electron is free to align its magnetic moment in any direction. When an external magnetic field is applied, these magnetic moments will tend to align themselves in the same direction as the applied field, thus reinforcing it.

FERROMAGNETISM 

A ferromagnet, like a paramagnetic substance, has unpaired electrons. However, in addition to the electrons' intrinsic magnetic moment's tendency to be parallel to an applied field, there is also in these materials a tendency for these magnetic moments to orient parallel to each other to maintain a lowered-energy state. Thus, even when the applied field is removed, the electrons in the material maintain a parallel orientation.

Every  ferromagnetic  substance  has  its  own  individual  temperature,  called  the  Curie temperature, or Curie point, above which it loses its ferromagnetic properties. This is because the thermal tendency to disorder overwhelms the energy-lowering due to ferromagnetic order.

Some well-known ferromagnetic materials that exhibit easily detectable magnetic properties (to form magnets) are nickel, iron, cobalt, gadolinium and their alloys.

FERRI MAGNETIC ORDERING

Like ferromagnetism, ferrimagnets retain their magnetization in the absence of a field. However, like antiferromagnets, neighboring pairs of electron spins like to point in opposite directions. These two properties are not contradictory, because in the optimal geometrical arrangement, there is more magnetic moment from the sublattice of electrons that point in one direction, than from the sublattice that point in the opposite direction.

Most ferrites are ferrimagnetic. The first discovered magnetic substance, magnetite, is a ferrite and was originally believed to be a ferromagnet; Louis Néel disproved this, however, after discovering ferrimagnetism.

SUPER PARAMAGNETISM 

When a ferromagnet or ferrimagnet is sufficiently small, it acts like a single magnetic spin that is subject to Brownian motion. Its response to a magnetic field is qualitatively similar to the response of a paramagnet, but much larger.

ELECTROMAGNET 

An electromagnet is a type of magnet whose magnetism is produced by the flow of electric current. The magnetic field disappears when the current ceases.

Electromagnet attracts paper a clip when current is applied creating a magnetic field. The electromagnet loses them when current and magnetic field are removed.

OTHER TYPES OF  MAGNETISM 

    Molecular magnet

    Metamagnetism

    Molecule-based magnet

    Spin glass

MAGNETIC DIPOLES 

A very common source of magnetic field shown in nature is a dipole, with a "South pole" and a "North pole", terms dating back to the use of magnets as compasses, interacting with the Earth's magnetic field to indicate North and South on the globe. Since opposite ends of magnets are attracted, the north pole of a magnet is attracted to the south pole of another magnet. The Earth's North Magnetic Pole (currently in the Arctic Ocean, north of Canada) is physically a south pole, as it attracts the north pole of a compass.

A magnetic field contains energy, and physical systems move toward configurations with lower energy. When diamagnetic material is placed in a magnetic field, a magnetic dipole tends to align itself in opposed polarity to that field, thereby lowering the net field strength. When ferromagnetic material is placed within a magnetic field, the magnetic dipoles align to the applied field, thus expanding the domain walls of the magnetic domains.

MAGNETIC MONOPOLES 

Since a bar magnet gets its ferromagnetism from electrons distributed evenly throughout the bar, when a bar magnet is cut in half, each of the resulting pieces is a smaller bar magnet. Even though a magnet is said to have a north pole and a south pole, these two poles cannot be separated from each other. A monopole — if such a thing exists — would be a new and fundamentally different kind of magnetic object. It would act as an isolated north pole, not attached to a south pole, or vice versa. Monopoles would carry "magnetic charge" analogous to  electric charge. Despite systematic searches since 1931, as of 2010, they have never been observed, and could very well not exist.

Nevertheless, some theoretical physics models predict the existence of these magnetic monopoles. Paul Dirac observed in 1931 that, because electricity and magnetism show a certain symmetry, just as quantum theory predicts that individual positive or negative electric charges can be observed without the opposing charge, isolated South or North magnetic poles should be observable. Using quantum theory Dirac showed that if magnetic monopoles exist, then one could explain the quantization of electric charge---that is, why the observed elementary particles carry charges that are multiples of the charge of the electron.

Certain grand unified theories predict the existence of monopoles which, unlike elementary particles, are solitons (localized energy packets). The initial results of using these models to estimate the number of monopoles created in the big bang contradicted cosmological observations — the monopoles would have been so plentiful and massive that they would have long since halted the expansion of the universe. However, the idea of inflation (for which this problem served as a partial motivation) was successful in solving this problem, creating models in which monopoles existed but were rare enough to be consistent with current observations.

Some organisms can detect magnetic fields, a phenomenon known as magnetoception. Magnetobiology studies magnetic fields as a medical treatment; fields naturally produced by an organism are known as biomagnetism.