Coulomb's Law and the Electric Field

Sunday, August 30, 2015

11:50 AM

As I did with Classical Mechanics, I am going to start off with basic Electrostatics
to develop the technique of E&M problem solving. While other universities don't
often ask qualifying problems based on Coulomb's law, there are certain
problems that have been asked.
The most important skill that these problems should develop is how to best tackle
complex vector integral equations... We will start with Coulomb's Law.
Coulomb's Law
I think David Griffiths' book "Introduction to Electrodynamics" (4th ed.)is a
good book - he does an excellent job of explaining complex concepts in
Electromagnetic theory. But, I believe that Ronald K. Wangsness' book
"Electromagnetic Fields" (2nd ed.) does a much better job at showing you
how to solve EMAG problems.
A simple example demonstrating the difference between these texts (and
the difference between the how students attack complex emag problems) is
in the definition of Coulomb's Law.

This is the basic definition of Coulomb's Law (present in both books)

Griffiths:

Note: later in the next section 2.1.3: The Electric Field, Griffiths goes on to
show graphically what r, r', and r represent.

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Here is how Wangsness describes Coulomb's Law:

Now, in both cases, Coulomb's law is defined as:

Griffiths

Wangsness

First off: note how Wangsness uses a more descriptive formalism. It should
be clear in Wangsness' nomenclature that Coulomb's Law is used to
describe the force that charged particle q' exerts on charge particle q. It also
first shows graphically and mathematically what the vector R represents.
Finally, Wangsness then puts Coulomb's Law in a mathematically "more
workable" format:

Note how the unit vector for R is converted, by its definition into
and how Coulomb's Law no longer relies on a non-orthogonal unit vector.
Lecture Notes Page 2

and how Coulomb's Law no longer relies on a non-orthogonal unit vector.

This simple revision to how we think of Coulomb's Law makes it much more
easy to visualize how to setup our problem. In short, this is the most useful
equation for solving Coulomb's law problems

To solve Coulomb's Law and integral equations for the Electric field, we will:
1. Make a clear graph that defines:
a. r' = vector from our origin to our source point dq'
b. r = vector from our origin to our point of interest (which would contain a
charge dq or could be free space)
c. R = vector from dq' to our point of interest
2. Put Coulomb's Law in the form:
a. For discreet points

b. For distributed charges:

(and convert R into R/R)

Then you solve the problem

EXAMPLE: Let's look at a fairly straightforward problem to solve that is on level

with a few qualifying exam problems that I've seen at other universities:
Wangsness Problem 2-10

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Related to this concept of force is the electric field

Coulomb's Law and this form of the Electric field are effectively interchangeable
in terms of problem solving. As you've seen above, simple geometries can require
long and/or complex integration techniques. Therefore, an alternative way to find
the electric field or a charge distribution is Gauss' Law:
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the electric field or a charge distribution is Gauss' Law:

Gauss' Law

We use this form of Gauss' Law if we know Qenc and if we can make symmetric
surface areas (da). Typically, that means we integrate over a rectangular cube,
cylinder, or sphere. YOU MUST HAVE SYMMETRY TO USE GAUSS' LAW TO SOLVE
A PROBLEM
Anyway, we can also express Gauss' law in terms of a Differential Equation:

Example of integral form of Gauss' Law: Calculate the electric field in all points of
space that is created from an infinitely long line source with a charge per unit
length, , that is constant

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Example 2: Spherically symmetric charge distribution

Consider a charge, Q, uniformly distributed in a sphere of radius a. The charge
distribution, (r, does not need to be constant but it is independent of angle
(that is, it is only dependent on r - which means the charge per unit volume is
(r). Calculate the electric field as a function of r.

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Here is an example in which we are given E. To solve this, we use the differential
form of Gauss' Law:

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