Coulomb’s Law and the Electric Field

Abstract

In the previous two chapters, we discussed in some detail the mathematics of electromagnetics: vector algebra and vector calculus. We are now ready to start looking into the physical phenomena of electromagnetics. It will be useful to keep this in mind: The study of electromagnetics is the study of natural phenomena. There are two reasons why it is important to emphasize electromagnetics as an applied science. First, it shows that it is a useful science, and its study leads to understanding of nature and, perhaps most importantly from the engineering point of view, to understanding of the application of electromagnetics to practical and useful designs. Second, all aspects of electromagnetics are based on experimental observations. All laws of electromagnetics were obtained by careful measurements which were then cast in the forms of simple laws. These laws are assumed to be correct simply because there is no evidence to the contrary. This aspect of the laws of electromagnetics should not bother us too much. Although we cannot claim absolute proof to correctness of the laws, experimentation has shown that they are correct and we will view them as such. In the learning process, we will make considerable use of the mathematical tools outlined in Chaps. 1 and 2. It is easy to forget that the end purpose is physical design; however, every relation and every equation implies some physical quantity or property of the fields involved.