NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Electrostatic

As with hydrostatics and the Statics portion of classical mechanics, the actual situation need not be 'static' and unchanging. Instead 'static' implies that the dynamic portion is being ignored, and we analyze frozen snapshots of the situation. In Electrostatics we study e-fields, voltage, and charge but ignore any currents and magnetism which may also be present. Because of its relationship and interaction with magnetism, the two fields are often combined as electromagnetism.

Coulomb's law

The fundamental equation of electrostatics is Coulomb's law, which describes the force between two point charges:

$F = frac{ left|q_1 q_2 right|}{4 pi epsilon_0 r^2}$

Electric potential

Electric potential (also known as voltage) is another common and significant topic in electrostatics. Poisson's equation gives the relationship between charge distribution and potential:

${ nabla}^2 V = - { rho over epsilon_0}$

Search Results (1109 words)
	Coulomb's law, in physics, law stating that the electrostatic force between two charged bodies is proportional to the product of the amount of charge on the bodies divided by the square of the distance between them.
	Electrostatics has many other applications, ranging from the analysis of phenomena such as thunderstorms to the study of the behavior of...
	canonical equation for implicit solvent electrostatics is the Poisson-Boltzmann equation...

The Electrostatics Group (453 words)
	Electrostatics is at the same time both a well-defined subject and a very ill defined area of research and technology.
	Electrostatics is everywhere, from the macro scale in the atmosphere to the nanoscale in the interactions between molecules and atoms.
	Electrostatics is one of the most important groups of physical phenomena, influencing the behaviour of nature on the extremely large and extremely small scales.

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Coulomb's law

Electric potential

See also

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