Electric Forces

B Block took time to go over their last test, Friday's lab and then jumped into the world of electrostatics. We discussed the property of charge and what being charged imparted on an object. The methods of generating charge on an object were described and the basic nature of electric forces was broached. C, E and F Blocks took the electric forces ball and ran with it. Folks were reminded that electric forces were field forces, vectors and could both attract and repel, depending on the nature of the charges involved. We took time to look at Coulomb's Law for single pairs of charge and saw that electric forces are based on the magnitude of the charges and their separation distance (in an inverse-square relationship). We used Coulomb's Law to determine the size of the force between two charged particles, then extended that technique to the situation where more than two charges were present. For C and F Blocks, you can rest assured your charges will be in a line. E Block had to dig deeper into the vector nature of electric force and contend with particles that were not linearly arranged. They also had to determine the equilibrium position of a charge added to an established system. I'm trying to get a couple of videos uploaded to help you guys, but the host server is being a pain in the neck. Check back later, but if I can't get them posted... don't fret. Do your best - you do have all the necessary skills - and we'll go over them in class tomorrow.