Introduction:
Electromagnetism, science of charge and of the forces and fields associated with charge. Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of electromagnetism.
Electricity and magnetism were long thought to be separate forces. It was not until the 19th century that they were finally treated as interrelated phenomena. In 1905 Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity established beyond a doubt that both are aspects of one common phenomenon. At a practical level, however, electric and magnetic forces behave quite differently and are described by different equations. Electric forces are produced by electric charges either at rest or in motion. Magnetic forces, on the other hand, are produced only by moving charges and act solely on charges in motion.
Electric phenomena occur even in neutral matter because the forces act on the individual charged constituents. The electric force in particular is responsible for most of the physical and chemical properties of atoms and molecules. It is enormously strong compared with gravity. For example, the absence of only one electron out of every billion molecules in two 70-kilogram (154-pound) persons standing two metres (two yards) apart would repel them with a 30,000-ton force. On a more familiar scale, electric phenomena are responsible for the lightning and thunder accompanying certain storms.
Electric and magnetic forces can be detected in regions called electric and magnetic fields. These fields are fundamental in nature and can exist in space far from the charge or current that generated them. Remarkably, electric fields can produce magnetic fields and vice versa, independent of any external charge. A changing magnetic field produces an electric field, as the English physicist Michael Faraday discovered in work that forms the basis of electric power generation. Conversely, a changing electric field produces a magnetic field, as the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell deduced. The mathematical equations formulated by Maxwell incorporated light and wave phenomena into electromagnetism. He showed that electric and magnetic fields travel together through space as waves of electromagnetic radiation, with the changing fields mutually sustaining each other. Examples of electromagnetic waves traveling through space independent of matter are radio and television waves, microwaves, infrared rays, visible light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays. All of these waves travel at the same speed—namely, the velocity of light (roughly 300,000 kilometres, or 186,000 miles, per second). They differ from each other only in the frequency at which their electric and magnetic fields oscillate.
Maxwell's equations still provide a complete and elegant description of electromagnetism down to, but not including, the subatomic scale. The interpretation of his work, however, was broadened in the 20th century. Einstein’s special relativity theory merged electric and magnetic fields into one common field and limited the velocity of all matter to the velocity of electromagnetic radiation. During the late 1960s, physicists discovered that other forces in nature have fields with a mathematical structure similar to that of the electromagnetic field. These other forces are the strong force, responsible for the energy released in nuclear fusion, and the weak force, observed in the radioactive decay of unstable atomic nuclei. In particular, the weak and electromagnetic forces have been combined into a common force called the electro weak force. The goal of many physicists to unite all of the fundamental forces, including gravity, into one grand unified theory has not been attained to date.
An important aspect of electromagnetism is the science of electricity, which is concerned with the behaviour of aggregates of charge, including the distribution of charge within matter and the motion of charge from place to place. Different types of materials are classified as either conductors or insulators on the basis of whether charges can move freely through their constituent matter. Electric current is the measure of the flow of charges; the laws governing currents in matter are important in technology, particularly in the production, distribution, and control of energy.
The concept of voltage, like those of charge and current, is fundamental to the science of electricity. Voltage is a measure of the propensity of charge to flow from one place to another; positive charges generally tend to move from a region of high voltage to a region of lower voltage. A common problem in electricity is determining the relationship between voltage and current or charge in a given physical situation.
This article seeks to provide a qualitative understanding of electromagnetism as well as a quantitative appreciation for the magnitudes associated with electromagnetic phenomena.
Coulomb’s law:
Many of these devices and phenomena are complex, but they derive from the same fundamental laws of electromagnetism. One of the most important of these is Coulomb’s law, which describes the electric forcebetween charged objects. Formulated by the 18th-century French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, it is analogous to Newton’s law for the gravitational force. Both gravitational and electric forces decrease with the square of the distance between the objects, and both forces act along a line between them. In Coulomb’s law, however, the magnitude and sign of the electric force are determined by the charge, rather than the mass, of an object. Thus, charge determines how electromagnetism influences the motion of charged objects. (Charge is a basic property of matter. Every constituent of matter has an electric charge with a value that can be positive, negative, or zero. For example, electrons are negatively charged, and atomic nuclei are positively charged. Most bulk matter has an equal amount of positive and negative charge and thus has zero net charge.)
According to Coulomb, the electric force for charges at rest has the following properties:
(1) Like charges repel each other, and unlike charges attract. Thus, two negative charges repel one another, while a positive charge attracts a negative charge.
(2) The attraction or repulsion acts along the line between the two charges.
(3) The size of the force varies inversely as the square of the distance between the two charges. Therefore, if the distance between the two charges is doubled, the attraction or repulsion becomes weaker, decreasing to one-fourth of the original value. If the charges come 10 times closer, the size of the force increases by a factor of 100.
(4) The size of the force is proportional to the value of each charge. The unit used to measure charge is the coulomb (C). If there were two positive charges, one of 0.1 coulomb and the second of 0.2 coulomb, they would repel each other with a force that depends on the product 0.2 × 0.1. If each of the charges were reduced by one-half, the repulsion would be reduced to one-quarter of its former value.
Static cling is a practical example of the Coulomb force. In static cling, garments made of synthetic material collect a charge, especially in dry winter air. A plastic or rubber comb passed quickly through hair also becomes charged and will pick up bits of paper. The synthetic fabric and the comb are insulators; charge on these objects cannot move easily from one part of the object to another. Similarly, an office copy machine uses electric force to attract particles of ink to paper.
Principle of charge conservation:
Like Coulomb’s law, the principle of charge conservation is a fundamental law of nature. According to this principle, the charge of an isolated system cannot change. If an additional positively charged particle appears within a system, a particle with a negative charge of the same magnitude will be created at the same time; thus, the principle of conservation of charge is maintained. In nature, a pair of oppositely charged particles is created when high-energy radiation interacts with matter; an electron and a positron are created in a process known as pair production.
The smallest subdivision of the amount of charge that a particle can have is the charge of one proton, +1.602 × 10−19 coulomb. The electron has a charge of the same magnitude but opposite sign—i.e., −1.602 × 10−19 coulomb. An ordinary flashlight battery delivers a current that provides a total charge flow of approximately 5,000 coulomb, which corresponds to more than 1022 electrons, before it is exhausted.
Electric current is a measure of the flow of charge, as, for example, charge flowing through a wire. The size of the current is measured in amperes and symbolized by i. An ampere of current represents the passage of one coulomb of charge per second, or 6.2 billion billion electrons (6.2 × 1018 electrons) per second. A current is positive when it is in the direction of the flow of positive charges; its direction is opposite to the flow of negative charges.
