SPOOKY ELECTRIC FORCE

Kicking off the new school year, we started off with the electrical force, not to be confused with magnetic force, which deals with magnets. As for the electrical forces, it’s like a spooky force since it’s not a force applied by an object, but more of something that is intangible, hence SPOOKY. The electrical force is just a force between something that is positively charges (lower number of electrons compared to protons) to something that is negatively charged (higher number of electrons compared to protons). When a balloon rubs against my hair, it collects excess electrons from my hair and transfers onto the balloon. Whatever side my hair rubbed against the balloon means that that area is now negatively charged. NOTICE HOW THERE NEEDED TO BE FRACTION IN ORDER FOR THE NEGATIVE CHARGE TO SEPARATE FROM MY HAIR TO THE BALLOON. I think of the friction as energy added to the system in order to get the electrons to move and to go onto the balloon. When using the bottom tape (negative charge) of the sticky tape test and putting it near the balloon, the tape and balloon repelled each other. Thus, we know that two items have the same charge. Think: OPPOSITES ATTRACT. One notable point made during a whiteboard discussion is that the repelling force made between the tape and balloon is equal. This means that the force the tape applies to the balloon is the same amount of force that the balloon applies to the tape. Sounds funky yet familiar doesn’t it?! IT’S NEWTON’S THIRD LAW THAT FORCES COME IN PAIRS (technically “every action there is an equal or opposite reaction”).

Onto another note, charges don’t “cancel” each other out! The positive and negative charges are still present because the proton and electron of the atom is still present. The charge is just neutral. Think of the Van de Graaff machine (I legit had to google “what is the physics machines where if i touch it my hair flies up” to find this name). When two plates (that were conductors) were touching each other and are put near the machine but not touching it, the electrons on the plate did not move to the opposite side of the plate, well maybe some excess electrons did, but for the most part the electrons attached to the atoms did not. Instead, what happened was that the electrons within the atom moved to the opposite side of the electron cloud, or in that general area since they move very fast and do not always stay in one place. The electrons do this because they repel the other electrons near the plate from the Van de Graaff machine. When this happens, the nucleus of the atom is exposed and the protons are attracted to the electrons not the machine. Even though the plate is neutral with equal amounts of protons and electrons (assuming there are no excess electrons), it still can attract other items because the particle with the charge itself is still present.

If the two plates touched the machine, electrons from the machine transfer onto to the plate (it’s like the idea of diffusion from one area thats concentrated with electrons to one area it is not). When you touch the plates, you get shocked because there is excess electrons on the plates. Within the whiteboard discussion, the class talked about how half the electrons on the machine will transfer onto the plate like diffusion. But I do not understand how it is half. Won’t it just transfer to the point where all the electrons are equally distributed on the machine and the two plates? I understand the part where if I remove the two plates from the machine and I then separate the plates, then the electron amount will be split in half and be equal on the two plates, like diffusion again. But what if the plates were different sizes. Would a larger plate hold more electron compared to the smaller plate when split from each other in order to diffuse equally? I think it will because if I spray perfume in a room that is connected to a smaller room, then when the perfume particles are evenly dispersed, there will be more particles in the larger room than in the smaller room because there is more area in the larger room to cover.

THIS IS RANDOM BUT: A TEST CHARGE is a small (in size and charge) positively charged particle (or object?)

Aside from this, I also learned about electric fields! The attraction of the electric field around a charged object gets smaller and small with distance. It will be harder to attract two oppositely charged objects together when they are far away then when they are close together. In terms of formula, we learned Coulomb’s Law where force is inversely proportional to the distanced squared. This formula is similar to Newton’s law of gravitation, though not exactly the same:

DISCLAIMER: THIS PHOTO DOES NOT BELONG TO ME

http://slideplayer.com/slide/7508832/

Published by Hope Marsh

On the fiesta, I think I’m getting better at realizing relationships within formulas in my head. For example, if i double distance within Coulomb’s Law then what would happen to the force? While doing the fiesta, I was able to reason within my head that the force would quadruple since the distance is squared. If I was asked a question similar to this in the past, I probably would have used a calculator. Although I did use a calculator on the quiz to double check my answers, i still relied on myself for the most part. Hopefully, I can continue to improve an not need the calculator later on. As for another lingering question on my mind, what is the magnetic force actually? Can something have both an electric and magnetic force? Does the object have to be a metal/magnetic to be a magnetic force? How do magnets work? Do magnets of one charge have a lot of electrons and magnets of the opposite charge just have less electrons? Or is the magnet neutral but still has this “magnetic spooky pull/push” to it? I know this does not tie in with electric force but the electric force topic sparked all these magnetic force questions from me because I thought these two forces were the same thing before learning about this topic. (Very mind boggling indeed.)