ELECTRICITY

BY: DEEPALI SINGH @ AMAN JAMWAL

ELECTROSTATICS
INTRODUCTION
Many of us have experienced of getting electric shocks from the door knob of our room or the car door or the iron bar of a bus, particularly in a dry weather after sliding from our seat or shoes being rubbed against the carpet. Have you ever wondered why? Many scientists tried to explain this phenomenon. First of all, Thales, a Greek scientist (624546BC), observed that a piece of amber when rubbed against a piece of wool, attracted feathers and splinters of wood and the wool as well. Also, when a glass rod is rubbed with a silk cloth, it attracts bits of paper as well as the silk. The reason behind these kinds of electric shocks or these mysterious attractions is the discharge of electric charges through our body as well as certain materials, which get accumulated on one body after being rubbed with another. Another common example of electric discharge is the lightning that we see during thunderstorms. For the case of metallic bodies, they get charged because of friction between them and air. The above examples state that electric charges are produced due to friction between two insulating bodies when they are rubbed against each other. These charges are called static charges as they cannot move on their own.

The branch of physics which deals with the study of static charges, forces between them, fields produced by them and potentials due to these charges is called Electrostatics or Static Electricity or Frictional Electricity.

ELECTRIC CHARGE
Electric charge is the inherit property of a body which decides its electrical behavior. Or The property of particles which gives rise to electric forces or other electric effects produced among them is called an electric charge. Let us take an example to prove the existence of charge: A proton and an electron separated by a distance of 1cm will attract each other with a gravitational force,

But in actual, an electron repels another electron with much greater force. So, how is this possible? This is possible due to electric force which is generated between the electrons. We can infer from this that electric force is much greater as compared to gravitational force. The electrons must be having some property due to which they repel each other. This is the property what we call charge. Just as masses are responsible for gravitational force, charges are responsible for electrical forces. Also, two protons separated by a distance of 1cm repel each other with the same force with which the electrons repel each other when kept 1cm apart from each other. This shows that charge on protons must be equal to that of electrons in magnitude. But if taken the case of neutrons, no electrical force is generated between them, i.e. it is zero, and they are acted upon by gravitational force alone. Therefore they do not contain any charge.

TYPES OF CHARGES
Presence of two types of charge can be explained by the following activity: 1. Suspend a glass rod rubbed with silk and an ebonite rod rubbed with fur separately. 2. Rub another glass rod rubbed with silk near the suspended glass rod, they will repel each other. 3. Also, the two pieces of silk used for this purpose repel each other. 4. Now bring an ebonite rod rubbed with fur near the suspended ebonite rod, repulsion will be observed. 5. Now bring an ebonite rod near the suspended glass rod, you will observe that they attract each other. However, the glass rod will repel the fur and similarly silk cloth will also be repelled by the ebonite rod. 6. If u touch two small pith balls with a glass rod rubbed with silk, the balls will repel each other. 7. Similar effect will be shown if an ebonite rod rubbed with fur is used instead of glass rod. 8. However, a pith ball touched with glass rod attracts another pith ball touched with ebonite rod.

From this activity, one can conclude that:-

Some experimenters speculated that invisible fluids were being transferred from one object to another during the process of rubbing, and that these fluids were able to effect a physical force over a distance. Charles Du Fay was one of the early experimenters who demonstrated that there were definitely two different types of changes wrought by rubbing certain pairs of objects together. The fact that there was more than one type of change manifested in these materials was evident by the fact that there were two types of forces produced: attraction and repulsion. The hypothetical fluid transfer became known as a charge. Benjamin Franklin was the one to name the two kinds of charges as positive and negative. By convention, charged acquired by glass rod or fur is positive and the charge acquired by ebonite rod or silk cloth is negative.

1. The objects like glass rods, ebonite/amber rods, silk, wool etc. aquire electric charge on rubbing due to friction. 2. The charge can be transferred from one body to another by actual contact (from rod to pith balls in this case). 3. The charge developed on glass rod is different from the charge developed on the ebonite rod. This is because a charged glass rod attracted the charged ebonite rod but repelled another charged glass rod. This implies that like charges repel each other whereas unlike charges attract each other. 4. If you bring an electrified glass rod in contact with the silk piece, with which it was rubbed, they no longer will attract each other nor will they attract any other object. This implies that charges acquired on rubbing are lost when two oppositely charged bodies are brought in contact with each other. From this we can conclude that the charges acquired by the objects on rubbing against each other must be equal and opposite. That is why they can nullify each others effect leaving each other unelectrified or uncharged. If an object possesses an electric charge, it is said to be electrified or charges. When it does not have any charge, it is said to be neutral. Also, the charge retains only on the rubbed area of a non conducting body and it does not spread on whole of the body as this charge is static on the rubbed portion only.

MEASUREMENT OF CHARGE
Presence of charge on a body can be detected by a Gold Leaf Electroscope. It consists of a vertical metal rod housed/enclosed in a box, with two thin gold leaves attached to its bottom end. When a charged object touches the metal knob at the top of the rod, charge flows on to the leaves and they diverge. The degree of divergence is an indicator of the amount of charge.

WHY DO MATERIAL BODIES AQUIRE CHARGE?

Some of you may wonder why do bodies acquire charge on them and how does this all happen? Lets try to find out. We all know that all matter is made up of atoms. And these atoms are in turn composed of smaller components known as particles. The three fundamental particles comprising most atoms are called protons, neutrons and electrons. Atoms are far too small to be seen, but if we could look at one, it might appear something like this:

Electron Proton Neutron

This crude model is that of the element carbon, with six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons.

Even though each atom in a piece of material tends to hold together as a unit, theres actually a lot of empty space between the electrons and the cluster of protons and neutrons residing in the middle. The tightly-bound clump of protons and neutrons in the center of the atom is called the nucleus However, electrons have significantly more freedom to move around in an atom as compared to protons or neutrons. In fact, they can be knocked out of their respective positions (even leaving the atom entirely!) by far less energy than what it takes to dislodge particles in the nucleus. If this happens, the atom still retains its chemical identity, but an important imbalance occurs. Electrons and protons are unique in the fact that they are attracted to one another over a distance. It is this attraction over distance which causes the attraction between rubbed objects, where electrons are moved away from their original atoms to reside around atoms of another object.

The process of electrons arriving or leaving is exactly what happens when certain combinations of materials are rubbed together: electrons from the atoms of one material are forced by the rubbing to leave their respective atoms and transfer over to the atoms of the other material. In other words, electrons comprise thefluid hypothesized by Benjamin Franklin. The transfer takes place from the material in which the electrons are less tightly bound to the material in which electrons are held more tightly i.e. electrons move from a body whose work function is lower to the body whose work function is higher. Thus, an object whose atoms have received a surplus of electrons is said to be negatively charged and its mass increases, while an object whose atoms are lacking electrons is said to be positively charged and its mass decreases, as confusing as these designations may seem.

Michael Faraday proved (1832) that static electricity was the same as that produced by a battery or a generator. Static electricity is, for the most part, a nuisance. Black powder and smokeless powder have graphite added to prevent ignition due to static electricity. It causes damage to sensitive semiconductor circuitry. While it is possible to produce motors powered by high voltage and low current characteristic of static electricity, this is not economic. The few practical applications of static electricity include xerographic printing, the electrostatic air filter, and the high voltage Van de Graaf generator.

Electrons tend to repel other electrons over a distance, as do protons with other protons. The only reason protons bind together in the nucleus of an atom is because of a much stronger force called the strong nuclear force which has effect only under very short distances. Because of this attraction/repulsion behavior between individual particles, electrons and protons are said to have opposite electric charges. That is, each electron has a negative charge, and each proton a positive charge. In equal numbers within an atom, they counteract each others presence so that the net charge within the atom is zero. This is why the picture of a carbon atom had six electrons: to balance out the electric charge of the six protons in the nucleus. If electrons leave or extra electrons arrive, the atoms net electric charge will be imbalanced, leaving the atom charged as a whole, causing it to interact with charged particles and other charged atoms nearby. Neutrons are neither attracted to nor repelled by electrons, protons, or even other neutrons, and are consequently categorized as having no charge at all.

CONDUCTORS, INSULATORS AND ELECTRON FLOW

The electrons of different types of atoms have different degrees of freedom to move around. With some types of materials, such as metals, the outermost electrons in the atoms are so loosely bound that they chaotically move in the space between the atoms of that material by nothing more than the influence of room-temperature heat energy. Because these virtually unbound electrons are free to leave their respective atoms and float around in the space between adjacent atoms, they are often called free electrons. In other types of materials such as glass, the atoms electrons have very little freedom to move around. While external forces such as physical rubbing can force some of these electrons to leave their respective atoms and transfer to the atoms of another material, they do not move between atoms within that material very easily. This relative mobility of electrons within a material is known as electric conductivity. Conductivity is determined by the types of atoms in a material (the number of protons in each atoms nucleus, determining its chemical identity) and how the atoms are linked together with one another. Materials with high electron mobility (many free electrons) are called conductors, while materials with low electron mobility (few or no free electrons) are called insulators. Here are a few common examples of conductors and insulators: CONDUCTORS: Silver Copper Gold Aluminum Iron Steel Brass Bronze Mercury Graphite Dirty water Concrete INSULATORS: Glass Rubber Oil Asphalt Fiberglass

 Porcelain Ceramic Quartz (dry) cotton (dry) paper (dry) wood Plastic Air Diamond Pure water When some charge is transferred to a conductor, it readily gets distributed over the entire surface of the conductor. In contrast, if some charge is put on an insulator, it stays at the same place. This property of materials tells us why a nylon or plastic comb is electrified on combing dry hair or on rubbing, but a metal article like spoon does not. The charges on metal leak through our body to the ground as both are conductors of electricity. When a charged body is brought in contact with the earth, all the excess charge on the body disappears by causing a momentary current to pass to the ground through the connecting conductor (such as our body). This process of sharing the charges with the earth is called grounding or earthing.

Earthing provides a safety measure for electrical circuits and appliances. A thick metal plate is buried deep into the earth and thick wires are drawn from this plate; these are used in buildings for the purpose of earthing near the mains supply.

HOW DOES EARTHING WORK? The electric wiring in our houses has three wires: live, neutral and earth. The first two carry electric current from the power station and the third is earthed connecting it to the buried metal plate. Metallic bodies of the electric appliances such as electric iron, refrigerator, TV are connected to the earth wire. When any fault occurs or live wire touches the metallic body, the charge flows to the earth without damaging the appliance and without causing any injury to the humans; this would have otherwise been unavoidable since the human body is a conductor of electricity.

CHARGING BY INDUCTION
We all know that one body can be easily charged by bringing in contact with a charged body. This is known as charging by conduction. Let us consider the following activity: 1. Bring two metal spheres, A and B, supported on insulating stands, in contact as shown in the figure. 2. Bring a positively charged rod near one of the spheres; say A, taking care that it does not touch the sphere. The free electrons in the sphere are attracted towards the rod. This leaves an excess of positive charge on the rear surface of B. Both kinds of charges are bound in the metal spheres and cannot escape. They, therefore, reside on the surfaces as shown in the figure. The left surface of sphere A, has an excess of negative charge and the right surface of sphere B, has excess of positive charge. However, not all the electrons have accumulated on the left of the sphere A. This is because as the negative charge starts building at the left surface of sphere A, other electrons are repelled by these. Equilibrium is reached almost instantly under the action of force of attraction of the rod and the force of repulsion due to the accumulated negative charges. If the rod is removed, the charges are not acted by any outside force and they redistribute to their original neutral state. 3. Separate the spheres by a small distance while the glass rod is still held near sphere A, as shown in the figure. The two spheres are found to be oppositely charged and attract each other. 4. Remove the rod. The charges on spheres rearrange themselves as shown in the figure. Now, separate the spheres quite apart. The charges on them get uniformly distributed over them, as shown in the figure. In this process, the metal spheres will each be equal and oppositely charged. This is charging by induction. The positively charged glass rod does not lose any of its charge, contrary to the process of charging by conduction.

This is the reason why smaller objects get attracted to charged objects. When electrified rods are brought near them, the rods introduce opposite charges on the near surfaces of the objects and similar charges move to the farther side of the object. Hence, they get attracted to the electrified rods.

BASIC PROPERTIESOF ELECTRIC CHARGE

1. ADDITTIVITY OF CHARGES If a system contains two point charges q1 and q2, the total charge of the system is obtained by simply adding algebraically q1 and q2, i.e., charges add up like real numbers or they are scalars like the mass of a body. If a system contains n charges q1, q2, q3...qn, then the total charge of the system is q1+q2+ q3+....+qn.

EXAMPLE I A system contains 5 charges +1, +2, -3, +4 and -5 in some arbitrary unit. Calculate the total charge. The total charge will be = (+1) + (+2) + (-3) + (+4) + (-5) = -1 (in the same unit)

2. CHARGE IS CONSERVED We already know the fact that when bodies are charged by rubbing, there is transfer of electrons from one body to the other; no new charges are either created or destroyed. When two bodies are rubbed, what one body gains in charge the other body loses. Within an isolated system consisting of many charged bodies, due to interactions among the bodies, charges may get redistributed but it is found that the total charge of the isolated system is always conserved. Hence, it is not possible to create or destroy net charge carried by an isolated system although the charge carrying particles may be created or destroyed in a process. For Example: Pair production: In this process, a ray photon is made to strike a metal, it materializes into an electron and a positron having total charge e + e=0, which is the initial charge on a photon. = e- + e+ (pair production)

Annihilation of matter: In this process, an electron and a positron annihilate each other to produce two -ray photons with zero charge. Charge is thus conserved. e- + e + = + (annihilation)

Nuclear transformation: Charge number is always conserved, i.e., the total charge remains same.
1 0n 92U 238 1 1p

+ -1eo +
90Th 234

(-decay)
4

+ 2He

(radioactive decay)(example)

3. QUANTISATION OF CHARGE