Electric Potential!!

In the upcoming unit, we will be learning about a new concept: electric potential! Electric potential is the potential energy per charge.

Electric Potential = PE/q

Electric potential is measured in volts (V) or Joules per Coulombs (J/C). The website, Physics Classroom states that, "the concept of electric potential is used to express the affect of an electric field of a source in terms of the location within the electric field." From this website, I found that an object with twice the charge will experience twice the potential energy when placed in the same location. Despite this, the electric potential is the same.

I also learned that a battery powered electric circuit has locations of high and low potentials. The charge moves through the wires and change in electric potential. There is an electric field created within the electrochemical cells of a battery between two terminals.

We will learn a lot more and expand our knowledge in this subject in the upcoming week!

Electrostatics!

Kicking of the new year with a new unit:

Electrostatics!

This unit relates back to chemistry, involving positive, negative, and neutral charges, and their attraction to each other.

Lets review what we learned in chemistry:

The three types of charges in an atom are protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons have a positive (+) charge, neutrons are neutral, and electrons hold a negative charge (-). The protons and neutrons are located within the nucleus and the electrons surround the atom.

One of the first things that we learned in this unit was that like forces (forces with the same charge) will repel, unlike charges (forces with different charges) will attract, and neutral charges have no effect on each other.

We also learned about conductors and insulators. Conductors allow charges to move more freely, whereas insulators like to hold onto electrons (charges don't move as freely).

Below are the new electrostatics equations that we added to the board not bored:

(1) Inverse Square Law: F α 1/r^2 (the force upon an object is going to be inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects.)

F = force

r = distance

(2) The Universal Law of Gravitation: F = G(m1*m2/r^2)

m = mass

r = distance

G is a constant

(3) q = ne^-

q = charge (C)

n = number of charges

e^- = charge of one electron

(4) Coulomb's Law: Fe = k*q1*q2/r^2

(5) E = F/q

My friends and I went out a little while ago to Spaghetti Factory, where we got ballon hats during dinner! These balloon hats needed to be put on a certain way to make sure it wouldn't fall off, which required a lot of moving/rubbing of the balloon against our hair. When we took the hats off for a nice picture, all of our hairs were standing up! (So we had to take it with the balloon hats on haha) Why did this happen? Magic? No, physics! When the balloon rubs against the hair, the hair becomes more positively charged while the balloon gets negatively charged. These unlike charges attract to one another, so when the balloon is lifted up, the hair goes with it too!

There's still a lot more to learn about electrostatics!