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Gold-leaf electroscope, showing induction (labelled polarity of charges), before the terminal is grounded. Using an electroscope to show electrostatic induction. The device has leaves/needle that become charged when introducing a charged rod to it. The leaves bend the leave/needle, and the stronger the static introduced, the more bending occurs.
Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material. The charge remains until it can move away by an electric current or electrical discharge . The word "static" is used to differentiate it from current electricity , where an electric charge flows through an electrical conductor .
Electrostatics is a branch of physics that studies slow-moving or stationary electric charges. Since classical times, it has been known that some materials, such as amber, attract lightweight particles after rubbing. The Greek word for amber, ἤλεκτρον (ḗlektron), was thus the root of the word electricity.
The history of electromagnetic induction, a facet of electromagnetism, began with observations of the ancients: electric charge or static electricity (rubbing silk on amber), electric current , and magnetic attraction . Understanding the unity of these forces of nature, and the scientific theory of electromagnetism was initiated and achieved ...
In all materials there is a positive electrostatic potential from the positive atomic nuclei, partially balanced by a negative electrostatic potential of what can be described as a sea of electrons. [36] The average potential is positive, what is called the mean inner potential (MIP). Different materials have different MIPs, depending upon the ...
In classical electrostatics, the electrostatic field is a vector quantity expressed as the gradient of the electrostatic potential, which is a scalar quantity denoted by V or occasionally φ, [1] equal to the electric potential energy of any charged particle at any location (measured in joules) divided by the charge of that particle (measured ...
Electric field from positive to negative charges. Gauss's law describes the relationship between an electric field and electric charges: an electric field points away from positive charges and towards negative charges, and the net outflow of the electric field through a closed surface is proportional to the enclosed charge, including bound charge due to polarization of material.
Electromagnetic or magnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force (emf) across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field. Michael Faraday is generally credited with the discovery of induction in 1831, and James Clerk Maxwell mathematically described it as Faraday's law of induction .