Consider two point charges, each exerting Coulomb force on the other. It is possible to describe the Coulomb interaction via an intermediate step by defining a new physical quantity called the electric field.
In the new picture, imagine that the first charge sets up an electric field independent of all other charges in the universe. When another charge comes in its vicinity, the second charge experiences an electric force depending on the electric field at that point. The source charge does not...

Atoms generally contain the same number of positively and negatively charged particles, protons, and electrons. Hence, they are electrically neutral. However, the centers of the positive and negative charges do not always coincide. In such a scenario, the electric field of an atom may not be zero.
A separation of the positive and negative charges can lead to a weak, remnant effect of the positive and negative charges. The expectation is that the more the distance between the positive and...

When a conductor is placed in an external electric field, the free charges in the conductor redistribute and very quickly reach electrostatic equilibrium. The resulting charge distribution and its electric field have many interesting properties, which can be investigated with the help of Gauss's law.
Suppose a piece of metal is placed near a positive charge. The free electrons in the metal are attracted to the external positive charge and migrate freely toward that region. This region then...

The fact that emfs are induced in circuits implies that work is being done on the conduction electrons in the wires. What can possibly be the source of this work? We know that it’s neither a battery nor a magnetic field, as a battery does not have to be present in a circuit where current is induced, and magnetic fields never do any work on moving charges. The source of the work is in fact an electric field that is induced in the wires. For example, if a stationary conductor is placed in a...

Consider a conductor in electrostatic equilibrium. The net electric field inside a conductor vanishes, and extra charges on the conductor reside on its outer surface, regardless of where they originate.
In the 19th century, Michael Faraday conducted the famous ice pail experiment to prove that the charges always reside on the surface of a conductor. The experimental set-up consists of a conducting uncharged container mounted on an insulating stand. The outer surface of the container is...

The three-dimensional representation of the electric field of a positive point charge requires tracing the electric field vectors, whose lengths decrease as the square of their distance from the charge and which point away from the charge at each point. This vector field is no doubt challenging to visualize. The visualization of electric fields becomes quickly intractable as the number of charges increases.
The solution to this problem is to use electric field lines, which are not vectors but...