A moving charge or a current creates a magnetic field in the surrounding space, in addition to its electric field. The magnetic field exerts a force on any other moving charge or current that is present in the field. Like an electric field, the magnetic field is also a vector field. At any position, the direction of the magnetic field is defined as the direction in which the north pole of a compass needle points.
A magnetic field is defined by the force that a charged particle experiences...

In most situations, forces can be grouped into two categories: contact forces and field forces.  Contact forces occur as a result of direct physical contact between objects. Field forces, however, act without the necessity of physical contact between objects. They depend on the presence of a "field" in the region of space surrounding the body under consideration. You can think of a field as a property of space that is detectable by the forces it exerts. Scientists think there...

A stationary charge creates and interacts with the electric field, while a moving charge creates a magnetic field.
Consider a point charge moving with a constant velocity. Like the electric field, the magnetic field at any point is directly proportional to the magnitude of the charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the source point and the field point. However, unlike the electric field, the magnetic field is always perpendicular to the plane containing the line...

Gauss's law states that the electric flux through any closed surface equals the net charge enclosed within the surface. This law is beneficial for determining the expressions for the electric field for a particular charge distribution if the electric flux is known.
Consider a non-uniformly charged sphere, for which the density of charge depends only on the distance from a point in space and not on the direction. Such a sphere has a spherically symmetrical charge distribution. Here, the electric...

Electric fields generated by static charges, often referred to as electrostatic fields, are characteristically different from electric fields created by time-varying magnetic fields. While the former is a conservative field, implying that no net work is done on a test charge if it goes around in a complete loop in the field, the latter is, by definition, not a conservative field; net work is done, and it is proportional to the rate of change of magnetic flux.
However, the observation of...

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...