Natural Science FES 150 Lecturer: Mr.

Ayman Abulail

Electric Charge and Electric Currents

Prepared by: Ahmed Mohammed Al Sayari 200910383 Hassan Abaas Al Bloushi 2009

Table of Contents
Table of Contents........................................................2 Abstract.......................................................................2 Introduction.................................................................3 Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was born on 14 June 1736 in Angoulme, France. His father Henri Coulomb, was an inspector of the Royal Fields in Montpellier. His mother, Catherine Bajet, came from a wealthy family in the wool trade. He is best known for developing Coulomb's law and The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, was named after him. He did on 23 August 1806...................................................9 Conclusion.................................................................15

Abstract
What is electricity? Where does is come from? Who discovered it? What is it? These are some questions that people usually dont think about these days. You turn on a switch and the light comes on; you put your 2 | Page

keys in the ignition and turn the car turn on. These things are some of the things we should think of and understand what is happening behind that switch or in the battery of the car or mobile phones, computer and all electric devices. We hear about positive and negative charge but do not understand them and how we use them and where they come from. Sometimes you feel a shock when touching a door knob or while shaking another persons hand. What is that shock you felt and why and how is it happening. We use the units of Ohm and coulombs but where did these come from and what do they represent in the world of physics and electronics. We have many materials with different properties. Each material has something special that makes it different from other materials. In electricity there are special materials that are used in wires and other electrical devices. Why we use these material and not other materials is a question in addition to the pervious questions that need to be answered.

Introduction
Electric charge and electric currents are very important to our lives today. In the case of electric charge we will discuss the different charges and how they are formed. In addition to static electricity which talks about the repletion and attraction factor of charges and signs. Coulombs law and the discovery of this formula that discusses the forces exerted on an electric charge and the magnitude of these forces. These are very important because without these we would have faced many problems and couldnt development and enhance our technology. 3 | Page

Furthermore electric current has a major role in or lives. We find current in all of your wires and electrical devices. Some of the factors in electric current are the electric battery and how it works, Ohms law and the relation of the voltage and resistance to the current. In addition to resistivity and the different materials used for electric current. These are other factors are some greatest discoveries in the world which opened new doors of technology and inventions. The topic is interesting because it talks about things that all people use everyday but dont really understand the physics behind it. These discoveries and factors have been discovered many years before and since that time people were trying to develop and enhance these factors to become more efficient and reliable. Some of these factors are still being used as it was first discovered and formulated many years ago such as Ohms law and Coulombs law.

Electric Charge

Static Electricity: Electric Charge and its Conversation

Static electricity is one of the major discovers that people found out about by coincidence. It was first known as the amber effect, in which the ancient knew that by rubbing a piece of amber tree with a cloth, makes the amber attract small pieces of leaves. We can also feel this even now in our daily lives such as the attraction we feel when getting out clothes from the dryer. Even sometimes we feel a shock when touching a metal door knob. These are all caused as a result of rubbing in which objects get charged and is 4 | Page

then said to be a net electric charge. After some experiments we found out that their where different charges. One of these experiments is the plastic and glass experiment. They rub both of these objects will a silk to charge them. Then we try charging another glass in the same way and bring it close to the first glass they repelled each other. But when the glass is brought next to the plastic they attracted. This experiment is illustrated below:

They found that there are only two kinds of electric charges and came up with a law that states that: unlike charges attract and like charges repel. The charges were referred to as negative and positive by philosopher and scientist Benjamin Franklin. He said that when ever a certain amount of charge is produced on one object, an equal amount of the opposite type of charge is produced on another object. For example, when a plastic ruler is rubbed with a paper towel, the plastic acquires a negative charge and the towel acquires an equal amount of positive charge. The charges are separated, but the sum of the two is zero. By this example we 5 | Page

established what we know today as the law of conservation of electric charge which states that the net amount of electric charge produced in any process is zero.

Insulators and Conductors

After many experiments we found out that there are some materials that let electricity or electric charges to flow and some do not allow. One of these experiments are having two object in which one of them is charge and the another is neural (having no charge) and having some kind of metal touching both objects, the neural object will be charged with the same charge as the first object. In the same conditions instead of using a metal object to touch both objects we use a wooden object the result will be neural and nothing will happen to either objects. After many experiments we found out that materials that contain iron are conductors (allow electric flow) and materials such as wood and rubber are insulators (do not allow electric flow). There are also some materials that are not really good conductors nor are good insulators and are not considered neither insulators nor conductors such as silicon and germanium, these materials are known as semiconductors.

Induced charge
An object having as positive charge is brought close to a neutral object. When both of them touch the neural will acquire a positive charge, meaning that the free electrons moved from one object to the other. 6 | Page

This type of charging is called charging by conduction. Another kind of charging objects is induced charge, for example let us take the example before with the two rods one with a positive charge and the other with a neutral charge. If we put the positive charged rod on one end of the neural rod without touching, the free electrons will not be able to leave the rod, but still be able to move within the rod. Meaning it will form a positive charge on the opposite side of the rod which is far from the originally positive rod which is brought close.

An electroscope is a device used to detect charge. In the electroscope there is inside two movable metal leaves. These leaves are connected to a metal knob from the outside. The apparatus works in two ways by using conduction and induction charging methods. If a positive charge is brought close to the knob we will be using induction charge which will form a positive charge on both leaves making them repel each other. In the other case of conduction if a positive charge 7 | Page

object touches the knob the whole apparatus acquires the net charge, making the leaves repel. The stronger the charge the further apart they move. By using the electroscope we can only know if there is a charge in the object but still we do not know what charge is it a negative or a positive charge, as illustrated before if we use a negative charge instead of a positive we will still get the same result. But we can figure out the charge using the electroscope by using this technique. First by using conduction there was a negative charge in the apparatus, we bring a negative object to the knob making the charges repel and move apart even more, then bring another object which we know is positively charged and touch the knob if the leaves move a but closer than before then the original sign was negative, this technique works either way for positive or negative charges.

Coulombs Law

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Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was born on 14 June 1736 in Angoulme, France. His father Henri Coulomb, was an inspector of the Royal Fields in Montpellier. His mother, Catherine Bajet, came from a wealthy family in the wool trade. He is best known for developing Coulomb's law and The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, was named after him. He did on 23 August 1806. He studied the electric charge forces of attraction and repulsion on other electric charges and wanted to know the factors that affected the magnitude of these forces. Then after many studies and experiments he came up with this statement the force one small charged object exerts on a second one is proportional to the product of the magnitude of the charge on one, Q1 times the magnitude of the charge on the other, Q2, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance r between them. This is illustrated in the equation below:

This equation as mentioned before gives the magnitude of the electric force that either object exerts on the other. Furthermore the direction of the 9 | Page

electric force is always along the line joining the two objects.

Electric Currents

Electric Battery
The people who discovered the electric battery were Luigi galvanic and Volta. A battery produces its energy by converting or transforming chemical energy into electrical energy this is the basic phenomena of how it works. Today we have many kinds of batteries and electric cells. The basic battery contains two rods made out of dissimilar metals called electrodes. These electrodes are put in a solution such as a dilute acid called an

electrolyte. Such devices are called an electric cell and having several cells together is considered to be a battery.

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As shown in the figure we have two electrodes, one made of Zinc and the other from Copper. They are both put in sulfuric acid as the electrolyte. The remaining part that is not in the solution is known as the terminal where connections and wires are connected. In this case the zinc electrode will start to dissolve and then acquires a negative charge and the copper gets a positive charge. If the electrodes are not connected there will not be much flow in the cell which will cause it to die.

Electric Current
For a battery to do its main function and we need a continuous path which connects between the terminals of the battery. This path then is known as an electric circuit. We use this in a light bulb, heater, radio and many other things. In this case were we have a continuous circuit from one terminal of the battery to the other, the flow of charge in the wires is called an electric current. The current (I) is known as the amount of the charge that passes through the conductor at any location during the time interval as shown below:

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Electric current is measured in coulombs per second known as Ampere, after the French physicist Andre Ampere.

Ohms Law: Resistance and Resistors

This law was established by George Simon Ohm in which he ran experiments to show that current in a wire is proportional to the potential difference. To have an electric current, a difference in potential is required. Different steps and discoveries took place to come up with Ohms law. The main comparison was between electric current in a wire and water in a river which is now known as the water analogy. In the end George discovered that how small or large a current is in a wire does not only depend on the voltage but also on the resistance the wire offers to the flow of electrons. This is how he came up with this equation for the electrical resistance showing that the current is inversely proportional to the resistance.

Furthermore from that equation before he derived what we know now as Ohms law, he found out that in metal conductors the resistance is a constant

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independent of the voltage and came up with this formula.

The unit for resistance abbreviated by omega ().

is

called

ohm

and

is

Resistors are used to control the amount of current. These resistors have resistance from less than 1 Ohm to million of Ohms. The value of a resistance is given or written on the resistor from the exterior, or may be given as a color code as shown in the bottom table.

The first two colors represent the first and second digits, the third color represents the power of ten that 13 | P a g e

it must be multiplied by, and the fourth is the manufactured tolerance.

Resistivity
By experiments it was found that the resistance R of any wire is directly proportional to the length L and inversely proportional to its cross-sectional area A. This is how we came up with this rule.

The unit for resistivity is (.m). The resistivity depends on the material used in the first place then other factors effect its result such as purity, heat treatment, temperature and other factors as shown in some of the materials below.

Discussion
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Electric factors such as electric charge, field, potential, and current. These discoveries have led to even major discoveries and developments that we see today. By using Ohms & Coulombs law and understanding the electric current, electric battery, the different charges and materials. The derivation of different equations and formulas to be able to understand the relation between them such as Current, voltage and resistance in Ohms law and how each one is inversely or directly proportional to one another.

Conclusion
The discoveries that were mentioned before in the field of electric charge and electric current have changed the world as we now it today. With out these discoveries we wouldnt have all of this technology and some of the luxuries we use in our daily lives. Electricity, mobile phones, computers, cars and many other devices wouldnt be available nowadays if not for these discoveries. We should try to improve in the fields of electric charge and electric current and try to enhance them to be more efficient to provide a better living for the future. These discoveries made by coulomb or ohm and other scientist we found many years ago. As the years passed the technology and usage of these discoveries have increased rapidly in addition to having major improvement done to them and are used in many different fields. This is how important these finding over the years have affected our lives as we know now it.

Reference
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DOUGLAS.C.GIANCOLI. PHYSICS: PRINCIPLES WITH APPLICATION, SIXTH EDITION; Published by: PEARSON EDUCATION, INC: 2005.

http://www.wikipedia.org/

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