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Physics Lesson 14.3.2 - Electric Field Lines
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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Electric Field Lines, this is the second lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Electric Field, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
Electric Field Lines
In order to show visually the electrostatic field produced by a charged object, we draw some imaginary arrows that show the direction of electric field at every region of the field. This is a confirmation of the fact that electric field E is a vector quantity.
By agreement, the arrows that show the direction of electrostatic field (electric field lines) start from the charge positive charge and terminate at infinity if no other charges are presents. Otherwise, the lines terminate to the negative charges around. This means electric field lines are open lines, i.e. only one thing between origin and endpoint is known. Look at the figure:
On the other hand, when two like charges are near each other, the electric field lines are deformed due to the presence of individual fields. If charges have opposite signs, the electric field lines produced by them have the pattern shown below:
When charges are of the same sign, their electric field lines are:
As you see, there are no electric field lines in the shortest path between two opposite charges. It means the resultant electric field at that part of the space is zero.
We can summarize the properties of electric field lines as follows:
Electric field lines begin at positive charges and terminate at negative ones
The number of lines per unit area in space is proportional to the strength of electric field in that part of space
Electric field vector at any point is tangent to the field lines passing through that point
Electric field lines never cross or touch each other
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 14.3.2 Electric Field Lines. There are 6 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Electric Field, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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