PHYS 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 37: James Clerk Maxwell, Electric Field
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We ca(cid:374) (cid:862)(cid:396)e(cid:373)o(cid:448)e(cid:863) the ea(cid:396)th, a(cid:374)d thi(cid:374)k of its effect as a fo(cid:396)ce field that acts on the moon! Electric charges exert forces at a distance (just like masses exert forces at a distance due to gravitational forces). To deal with electric forces that act at-a-distance people developed the idea of electric fields. The effect of having an electric field in space is that if one introduces a charge in a region where there is an electric field, the charge will experience a force on it. The space around any electric charge is modified by the cha(cid:396)ge"s p(cid:396)ese(cid:374)ce. The (cid:373)odificatio(cid:374) of space is such that if any other electric charge is brought near by, this other charge will feel a force on it. The electric field is defined as follows: if a small positive charge q experiences a force f at some point in space, the electric field e at that point in space is:
