PEP112 – Spring 2008
Prof. Svetlana Malinovskaya
16 January 2008
The Electric Field
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The Concept of a Field
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Electric and magnetic forces, like gravity, are long-range
forces
•
What is the mechanism of action at a distance?
•
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) proposed an idea that space
itself round a magnet is filled with magnetic influence, that
a magnet alters the space round it.
•
Faraday’s idea came to be called a field. The field
describes a function that assigns a value to every point in
space.
•
The alteration of the space around a mass is called the
gravitational field, the space around a charge is altered to
create the electric field.