Electric Dipole and Torque (10th Day)

Spring 2015
Professor Mason
March 26 class

Electric Dipole
In class, we needed to draw an electric field horizontally and give the direction of where it will go in between two bars containing one negative bar and one positive bar, [a = qE/m].

As for electric dipole, the dipole moment [p = 2aq].

We needed to sketch the forces on each particle on the picture with three lines shown. After that, we found out there was a torque, and we needed to calculate it by using torque equation shown below.




Torque
We found out that torque has positive and negative forces, which could be combined into [T net = 2Fa sin theta] or [T = pxE] and [Uf = -pE cos theta] or [ Uf = p . E (dot product)]. Other equation that we used was [W = pE (cos theta i - cos theta f)].

Flux

Flux is defined as [Flux = EA cos theta], which E is electrical field and A is area. Net flux = Rate in - Rate out = 0. We were given a positive charge in between the flux lines, and we needed to find which direction it would go. In the end, we needed to do coding in VPython, which requires a lot of work, but we did not take any pictures of it.