Electric Fields and Force

We began class with another closed circuit set-up but the goal was to set it up so that both light bulbs used were as bright as possible and as dim as possible. One of the set-ups is shown below and it involves that of a parallel set-up.

We then drew both of the set-ups as well as the circuit diagrams that coincided with them and labeled them as dim and bright. The parallel set-up proved to have dim light bulbs while the direct set up proved to have the brightest light bulbs.

 

We moved on to predict what a change in temperature between water within a styrofoam cup and electricity needed to have in order to solve for it. Our group predicted that a mass, time and power were needed in order to solve for it. We also recapped on Ohm's Law and showed how a current could be found by knowing the voltage and resistance. We also recapped about the equation P=IV and how when the voltage is increased, the current is also increased (which is common sense).

The main focus of the class though was regarding the relationship between work, energy, force and electric fields. The work is also defined as the integral of force dot the change in distance or force times distance times the cosine of the angle between the two vectors. This can be also translated into en electrical perspective which is the integral of an initial charge time the energy field value times a a change in distance. We reviewed force by working on a problem that dealt with F=ma. We also talked about electric potential energy and how it equals to negative work which also equals to the previous relationships discussed and as a result the final product would be one charge times a constant K times another charge over the distance between the two particles. We also talked about the how voltage is equal to electric potential over the charge of one particles which is also equal to a constant K times the charge of the particles over the distance.

We then decided to prove that the integral of the energy field times the change in distance is equal to some constant K times a charge over the distance. The result is shown below.

We then decided to take Python and plug in some charges as well as other bigger charges a certain distance away from the initial charges and find the electric potential of each respectively. The results are shown below.

Mason also asked us to predict what the picture would look like before we used Python to get the results. We also showed the manual calculation for one of the electric potential values.

Overall, the main focus of the class period was regarding electric fields and the relationship between work, force and electric potential energy. We also reviewed some of the power functions as well as Ohm's law.