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Electricity, Magnetism, and Light
Copyright © 2002 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
Shortcut URL to this page: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780126194555

Author(s): Wayne M. Saslow


ISBN: 978-0-12-619455-5

About this Book

= Full-text available Table of Contents


= Non-subscribed Electricity, Pages 1-38
What does this mean? PDF (2897 K)

Chapter 1 - A History of Electricity and Magnetism, to Conservation of Charge, Pages 39-79


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (4120 K)

Chapter 2 - Coulomb's Law for Static Electricity, Principle of Superposition, Pages 80-107
Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (2388 K)

Chapter 3 - The Electric Field, Pages 108-144


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (2899 K)

Chapter 4 - Gauss's Law: Flux and Charge Are Related, Pages 145-183
Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (4116 K)

Chapter 5 - Electrical Potential Energy and Electrical Potential, Pages 184-226


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (4396 K)

Chapter 6 - Capacitance, Pages 227-280


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (4870 K)

Chapter 7 - Ohm's Law: Electric Current Is Driven by Emf, and Limited by Electrical Resistance, Pages
281-335
Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (4670 K)

Chapter 8 - Batteries, Kirchhoff's Rules, and Complex Circuits, Pages 336-383


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (3358 K)

Chapter 9 - The Magnetism of Magnets, Pages 384-418


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (3248 K)

Chapter 10 - How Electric Currents Interact with Magnetic Fields, Pages 419-459
Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (3733 K)

Chapter 11 - How Electric Currents Make Magnetic Field: The Biot-Savart Law and Ampère's Law, Pages
460-504
Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (4190 K)

Chapter 12 - Faraday's Law of Electromagnetic Induction, Pages 505-558


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (5557 K)

Chapter 13 - Mechanical Implications of Faraday's Law: Motors and Generators, Pages 559-580
Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (1751 K)

Chapter 14 - Alternating Current Phenomena: Signals and Power, Pages 581-629


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (3879 K)

Chapter 15 - Maxwell's Equations and Electromagnetic Radiation, Pages 630-677


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (6915 K)

Chapter 16 - Optics, Pages 678-735


Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (21839 K)

Appendix A - General Mathematics Review, Pages A1-A10


PDF (359 K)
Appendix B - Introduction to Spreadsheets, Pages A11-A12
PDF (132 K)

Appendix C - The Periodic Table, Page A13


PDF (80 K)

Appendix D - Solutions to Odd-Numbered Problems, Pages A15-A29


PDF (1020 K)

Index, Pages I1-I18


PDF (1209 K)

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Copyright © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ScienceDirect® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V.
"Your power is turning our darkness to dawn, So roll on Columbia, roll on."
~From "Roll on Columbia,"
by Woody Guthrie, American musician referring to the Columbia River

Iev iewIP c e ,%,i e w

Electricity: Its Uses and


Its Visualization

Chapter Overview
Section R. 1 provides a brief introduction. Sections R.2-R.4 discuss electricity at home
and elsewhere, including automobiles and computers. Section R.5 poses two electrical
questions, and Section R.6 presents the electric fluid model and R.7 applies it to
answer them. Section R.8 discusses why the electric fluid model must be extended,
and how to reconcile the collective nature of the electric fluid with the behavior of
individual electrons. Section R.9 reviews vectors, primarily addition and subtraction,
and Section R.10 discusses two rules for multiplying vectors, the scalar product and
the vector product.

Rol Introduction
Without electricity, modern life would be impossible. Almost every item on your
person~from your shoes to your sunglasses~owes its manufacture to electrical
power. Indeed, since this is also true of your clothing, without electricity you
might well be completely naked.
This chapter discusses electricity in the home. Most importantly, it tries to
make physical and perceptible that difficult-to-visualize stuff called electricity.
The next chapter reports the struggles of early scientists~even as they were
learning to ask the right questions~to grasp the elusive electricity. Together,
both chapters provide a foundation of ideas and concepts, expressed mainly
without equations.

R.1.1 The Electric Fluid M o d e l Serves as a C o n c e p t u a l Guide


Once the rules to produce and detect static electricity were established, the
major advances were (1) Stephen Gray's 1729 discovery of two classes of
materials (conductors, which transport electricity, and insulators, which do
not transport electricity); (2) Charles Dufay's 1733 discovery of two classes
of electric charges and the rule that "opposites attract and likes repel"; and
(3) Benjamin Franklin's 1750 development of the electric fluid model. This model
implies the first quantitative law of electricity~the Law of Conservation of
Review/Preview ~ Electricity: Its Uses and Its Visualization

Electric Charge. Once this law was understood, it became easier to manipulate
electricity, and to study other electrical phenomena in a quantitative fashion.
The amount of electric fluid is known as electric charge Q; its unit is the coulomb,
or C.
The electric fluid model serves as a conceptual guide through Chapter 8,
which deal with static electricity and electric currents. The mathematical the-
ory of electricity in electrical conductors, although not strictly analogous to the
mathematical theory of ordinary fluids, nevertheless describes a type of fluid.
As for air and water, the amount of the electric fluid is conserved. However,
compared to air and water, the electric fluid has some special properties. Thus,
two blobs with an excess (or a deficit) of electric fluid repel each other (a conse-
quence of Dufay's discovery), whereas two drops of water are indifferent to each
other.
Our modern view of ordinary matter is that it has relatively light and mo-
bile negatively charged electrons, and relatively heavy and immobile positively
charged nuclei. This view can be made consistent with the electric fluid model
and can explain Gray's two classes of materials, conductors and insulators.

R.2 Electricity at Home: A Presumed


Common Experience
R~2.1 Hot, Neutral, and Ground
Modern buildings are equipped with three-hole electrical wall outlets (or re-
ceptacles, or sockets), where the plugs of electrical devices must be inserted to
obtain electrical power, as in Figure R. 1 (a). The holes of the outlet are called
hot, neutral, and ground. In normal operation, electric current is carried only by
the hot and neutral wires. Electric current is measured in amperes (A), or amps.
If you stood on the ground in bare feet and accidentally touched the neu-
tral or the ground wire of a properly wired electrical outlet, you would not be
shocked. However, you would receive a shock if you touched the hot wire: your

Lightbulb

Neutral Hot
Metallic sides of
bulb holder
(to neutral)
Contact on base
Ground (to hot)
(a) (b)

Figure R.1 (a) Grounded three-prong wall outlet. (b) Lightbulb with electrical contacts
on its base and on sides.
R.2 Electricity at Home: A Presumed Common Experience

Internal "short"
Motor inside case to metal case You

Drill j

Metal handle

"Hot"

"Neutral"

"Ground" wire Feet on ground

Figure R.2 How grounded wiring protects you when


there is a snort.

feet, touching the ground, would provide a path for the current to flow, thus
completing an electric circuit.
The size difference in Figure R.1 (a) between the neutral and hot h o l e s ~
the neutral hole is visibly longer than the hot one--is to ensure that only one
of the two possible types of connection takes place in devices like a lamp.
Figure R. 1 (b) illustrates the connections for a lightbulb inserted in a lamp with
a modern, asymmetrical ("polarized") two-prong plug, which in turn is plugged
into a correctly wired wall-socket. The wall-socket's hot wire is connected to
the (relatively inaccessible) base of the bulb-holder. For an old-fashioned sym-
metrical ("unpolarized") two-prong plug, the hot wire could just as likely be
connected to the more accidentally touched threaded end of the bulb-holder;
the first cartoon characters, of the prepolarized plug 1930s, regularly received
shocks in this manner. To help ensure proper wiring, inside the lamp the screws
for the two electrical connections typically have different colors, one like copper
(the hot wire) and one that is silver-gray (the neutral wire).
The round prong, or ground wire, is employed for safety purposes. Figure R.2
depicts a "short" between the hot wire and the electrically conducting case of
an electric drill. (A "short" is a connection that shouldn't be there; shorts are
undesirable.) Without the ground wire, the drill operator would provide the
only path from the hot wire to ground: hot wire to short to case to person to
ground. With the ground wire, there is an alternate "path of least resistance"
through which most of the electric current can pass: hot wire to short to case to
ground wire to ground.

Ro2o2 Voltage and Frequency o f Electrical Power in the House

Voltage bears much the same relationship to electricity as pressure does to water.
We write V as an abbreviation for the unit of voltage, the volt. The electrical
Review/Preview ~ Electricity: Its Uses and Its Visualization

power in a house in the United States is provided at 120 V. The voltage os-
cillates from minimum to maximum and back again in 1/60 of a second. This
corresponds to a frequency of 60 cps (cycles per second) or, more technically,
60 Hz (hertz). The power is provided by an electric company, which uses huge
electrical generators to convert mechanical energy from turbines to electrical
energy. The turbines are driven by water or by steam. The mechanical energy of
the churning waters of the Columbia River (recall the quote at the beginning of
the chapter) provides a large fraction of the power needs of the Pacific North-
west. On the other hand, the chemical energy released by burning coal or oil, or
the nuclear energy released in a nuclear reactor, vaporizes water into steam and
drives the steam that turns a turbine.
The electric light had an extraordinary influence on human society. American
children learn that, in the 1830s, the young president-to-be Abraham Lincoln
stayed up late reading by candlelight. However, by the 1890s, house lighting
by electricity was becoming available in large cities. Nevertheless, not until the
Rural Electrification Project of the 1930s did many parts of the United States
finally become freed of the fire hazards of oil lamps and candles. In the year
2000, many people in the United States were still alive who could remember
not having electrical lighting.

R~2.3 Watts and Impedance Matching


When you turn on a light switch, light is produced by bulbs that are rated in units
of the watt, or W. (The watt is the SI, or SystOme lnternationale, unit of power,
or energy per second; it is a joule per second, or J/s.) If there is an electrical
power failure, for illumination you use a flashlight, with power provided by one
or more voltaic cells; for a car the power is provided by six voltaic cells in series,
which truly constitutes a battery.
If you have ever tried to power a house lightbulb with a car battery, you
noticed that it did not light. This is due to poor impedance matching. A mechanical
example of poor impedance matching is the use of a regular tennis ball with
(relatively small) table-tennis rackets. Impedance mismatch of another type occurs
when a bulb intended for a low voltage application (flashlights, automobiles,
some external house lighting) is used in a house application; the bulb then gets
so much power that it burns up. A mechanical example is the use of a table-tennis
ball with (relatively large) regular tennis rackets. Proper impedance matching is
a fundamental design principle.
We now preview a few simple but important equations in order to apply
them to some real-life situations.

R.2~4 Current Is the Rate of Charge Flow


If a constant current I flows for a time t, then it transfers a charge Q given by

Hence the unit of charge, the coulomb (C), has the same units as the ampere-
second, so C = A-s. If 0.2 C of charge is transferred in 5 s, by (R. 1) this corre-
sponds to a current I = 0.2/5 = 0.04 A.
R.2 Electricity at Home: A Presumed Common Experience

High voltage Resistance R Low voltage

In ~ Out
Current ! Current !
I_ AV I
I. . . . . . I

Response ~ i = .& V ~ Driving force


R

Figure R.3 A resistor, a voltage difference, and an


electric current: Ohm's law.

R~2o5 Ohm's Law: When Current Is Proportional


to the Driving Voltage
Ohm's law is an experimentally determined relation that holds for most mate-
rials (e.g., sea water or copper wire), but not all materials (e.g., the important
semiconductors silicon and germanium). When the two ends of a wire are con-
nected, respectively, to the high- and low-voltage terminals of a voltaic cell or of
an electrical outlet, there is a voltage difference A V across the wire. Associated
with A V is the electric current I passing through the wire. See Figure R.3, where
the wire is represented by a jagged line.
Ohm's law says that (1) current I flows in the direction from high voltage to
low voltage; (2) I is proportional to the voltage difference A V across the object:

iiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiEiiiiii!ii!iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
i! i iiiil
iiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiii!i iiiii i!i i iiiiiii i ii
In (2), proportional means that R, called the electrical resistance, is inde-
pendent of the value of A V. Ohm's law holds for copper, but not for silicon.
Equation (R.2) can be made to apply to silicon if we let R depend on A V.
Here's how to "read" (R.2). Knowing how to "read" an equation is an impor-
tant skill. Equation (R.2) implies that if we measure both the "input" A V and
the "output" l, and then we employ R = A V/I, then we can obtain the elec-
trical resistance R. The unit of electrical resistance, the ohm, or f2 (the Greek
letter Omega), is the same as a volt/amp = V/A. Thus S2 = V/A. Equation (R.2)
does not apply to objects that store appreciable amounts of electrical energy
(capacitors) or magnetic energy (inductors).
Equation (R.2) also implies that if you increase the "input" A V, then you also
increase the "output" l; and at fixed A V if you increase the resistance R, then you
decrease "output" I. See Figure R.3. An equation like (R.2) holds for the water
current through a pipe with a fluid resistance, driven by the pressure difference
between one end of the pipe and the other. Of course, the units of voltage and
pressure are different, as are the units of electric current and water current, and
as are the units of electrical resistance and fluid resistance. Note that it is pressure
difference that drives a water current; water will not flow through a pipe whose
ends are connected to two reservoirs at the same pressure. Similarly, it is voltage
difference that drives electric current through a wire; electric charge !2 will not
flow through a wire whose ends are connected to two charge reservoirs at the
same voltage. For water, we also can drive water current with water pumps. For
electricity, we also can drive an electric current with voltaic cells, thermoelectric
Review/Preview ~ Electricity: Its Uses and Its Visualization

devices, electromagnetic induction, and by a variety of other means. Any source


of energy that drives an electric current (even voltage difference) is called an
electromotive force, or emf. Such a source of energy does work on the electric
charge, so it also provides a force that causes an electric current to flow.

R.2~.6 Power Is the Product o f Current and Voltage Difference

The power 72 (in watts, or W) going into a resistor (in the form of heat) is given by

- I A V. (R.3)

When (R.2) and (R.3) are combined, they yield another equation,
..... ........... ........... ............. .....

first obtained by Joule, and for that reason sometimes called Joule's law.
From (R.3), the greater the current I at fixed A V, the greater the power
72; and the greater the voltage difference A V at fixed current I, the greater the
power ~P: 4 A at 120 V provides 480 W; 8 A at 120 V provides 960 W; and
8 A at 240 V provides 1920 W. We will now employ equations (R.1-R.4) to
answer some basic questions about power, voltage, current, electrical resistance,
and electrical safety.

R~2~7 Applications: Toasters and Power Cords

Consider a toaster, one of the simplest of electrical devices. Its working element
is a heat-resistant wire. Assuming that it produces 7~ - 720 W, and using A V =
120 V, (R.3) yields a current of I - 6 A. Putting this into (R.2) yields a value
of R - 20 s2 for the electrical resistance of the toaster. Hence, from the current
rating or power rating of a household appliance, we can deduce its electrical
resistance. Similarly, a 50-foot-long, 16-gauge extension cord that is rated at
13 A for 125 V must also be rated at 13. 1 2 5 - 1625 W for 125 V. Excess
power will start to melt the wire's insulation.

R~2,8 Overload: Fuses and Circuit Breakers

Most modern house wiring is rated to carry safely a current of either 15 A or


20 A. Circuit breakers (found in a fuse or breaker box, often located in some
obscure part of the house) protect the house wiring from carrying too large an
electric current; they "trip" if the current exceeds the rated value. Overload can
occur by using too many appliances on the same outlet; if a 1000 W hairdryer, a
600 W toaster, and a 1200 W microwave oven were all to use the same outlet,
the total power consumption would be 2800 W, corresponding to 23.3 A, an
overload even on a 20 A circuit.
Extension cords provide a way to exceed a rated value, even for a house that
is properly wired. In the summer of 1992, a fraternity house in Bryan, Texas,
burned down; someone had operated an air conditioner using an extension cord
with too low a current rating. The extension cord, under the overload of current,
began heating up like toaster wire, ultimately setting on fire the insulation or a
R.3 Some Uses of Electrical Power 7

nearby object. For an air conditioner rated at 72 - 2 4 0 0 W, and A V = 120 V,


(R.3) yields I = 20 A. Circuit breakers can safely carry such a current, but a
10 A or 12 A extension cord cannot. Note that, by (R.2), the air conditioner,
when running, has an effective electrical resistance of R = 120/20 = 6 S2.
Electrical motors, such as those employed in air conditioners, have different
electrical properties when they are turning than when they have not yet started
to turn. When turning, electrical motors produce a back emf that opposes the
driving emf, and this causes the current to be less when it is running than when it
is starting up. When an electrical motor is prevented from turning, no back emf
is produced, so a larger current goes to the motor, which can cause it to burn out.
Fuses are intended to burn out if excessively large currents flow through
them, thus protecting electrical devices and electrical wiring from too large a
current flow. Circuit breakers, on the other hand, do not burn out, and can be
reset, and for that reason they have supplanted fuses in modern buildings. In
the 1940s and earlier, when fuses were used instead of circuit breakers, many a
house burned down because, on overloaded circuits, people "cleverly" replaced
fuses by pennies, which permitted a much higher current flow than the fuses
they replaced. (Those who knew that pennies would serve to pass current, like
a fuse, but didn't know that they wouldn't protect the house wiring, unlike a
fuse, illustrate the maxim that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.") Fuses
(which typically are used in automobiles) must be replaced, once the cause of
the electrical problem has been fixed.

R~3 Some Uses of Electrical Power


Fans, blenders, and many other appliances employ electric motors to convert
electrical energy to mechanical energy. Electric motors use the magnetism of
electric currents to provide the torque needed to turn the fan or blender blade.
Automobiles use the chemical energy of a car battery to provide electrical
energy to start the starting motor, which in turn provides the mechanical energy
to start the gasoline engine. (The earliest automobiles employed no starting mo-
tors and no batteries; cars were started by the driver turning a crank to provide
the mechanical energy to start the engine. That is the origin of the term crank
over used to describe how the starting motor gets the gasoline engine turning.)
The chemical energy in gasoline (released as explosions within the cylinders
of the engine) is converted to mechanical energy (the pistons move, and this
causes the crankshaft to turn). Some of this mechanical energy gets converted
into electrical energy by an electrical generator~also called an alternator. This
goes into recharging the chemical energy of the battery, which then has enough
chemical energy to start the car later. Motors and generators are discussed in
Chapter 13.
Radios and TVs receive, tune, demodulate (i.e., extract the useful signal),
filter, and amplify weak and scrambled electromagnetic signals (Chapter 15),
making them intelligible and clear. Stereo systems do much the same for unin-
telligible signals embedded in plastic on a record or compact disk. We discuss
many aspects of the operation of these devices in Chapter 14.
A "walkman" employed to play compact disks (CDs) or cassette tapes uses
up the chemical energy in its voltaic cells much more rapidly than one used only
Review/Preview ~ Electricity: Its Uses and Its Visualization

to listen to radio stations. This is because it takes much more energy to turn a
CD and to amplify the signal from the CD than to simply amplify the signal
from the radio station. In terms of (R.3), the voltage difference A V is the same
in both cases, but the current l is much greater when the CD, rather than the
radio, is used.
When you use a computer, the keyboard may actuate by detecting the effect
of electric charge rushing back and forth when you exert pressure on a key. Inside
the computer is a "hard disk" made of a magnetic recording material. This records
information according to whether the magnetizations of some tiny magnetic par-
ticles are pointing along or opposite to a given direction in the plane of the disk.
Most important of all to the computer are its integrated circuits, which contain
miniaturized versions of circuit devices called resistors (Chapter 7), capacitors
(Chapter 6), and transistors (Chapter 7). A monitor using a vacuum tube yields
images from light produced by electrons that have been guided, either by electric
forces (Chapters 2 and 3) or magnetic forces (Chapters 10 and 11), to the screen,
on which special materials called phosphors (Chapter 5) have been deposited.
(Phosphors absorb energy from the electrons and quickly release that energy as
light.) Many portable computers use monitors with a liquid crystal screen; the
images on the screen are determined by electric forces acting on the molecules
of the liquid crystal material. Ink-jet printers are not only powered and con-
trolled by electricity, but even the ink is guided by electrical forces (Chapters 2
and 3) as it moves down toward the paper. Electrical forces hold the ink to
the paper, just as they hold together the atoms and molecules of our own
bodies.

Ro4 Electricity f r o m Voltaic Cells: DC Power


in an A u t o m o b i l e
Voltaic cells cause electric current in an electric circuit to flow in only one di-
rection, the direction being determined by how it is wired. This is called direct
current, or dc, in distinction to the oscillating current provided by the electric
company, alternating current, or ac. Here are some questions and answers about
electrical power associated with an automobile's use of voltaic cells.

1. How much power do car headlights use? The ratings on the packages reveal
that each low beam uses 35 W and each high beam uses 65 W. Ordinary
house lightbulbs usually exceed this, but are not as bright; unlike headlights,
house lightbulbs do not send off their light in a relatively narrow beam.
2. What is the voltage of a car battery? Typical car batteries are rated at 12 V.
3. What does "charge" mean for voltaic cells? Here charge has two mean-
ings. In the chemical sense, charge is the amount of chemicals available for
electricity-producing chemical reactions. In the electrical sense, charge is
the actual electricity released by electricity-producing chemical reactions.
These need not be the same, because the chemical charge can be used up by
non-electricity-producing reactions. A car battery might have a charge speci-
fied as 50 A-hr, which by (R. 1) is equivalent to 50 A. 3600 s - 1.8 • 10 ~ C.
R.4 Electricityfrom Voltaic Cells 9

4. How long does it take to discharge a car battery? A car battery with a charge
of 50 A-hr will discharge after it has produced either 50 A for one hour,
or 10 A for 5 hours, and so forth. We now find the time to discharge it if
we leave the headlights on. Using the 35 W value for one low beam, we
must use a power of 70 W for both. From (R.3), with 12 V, that means a
current of 5.83 A. Hence, by (R. 1) it takes 50 A-hr/5.83 A = 8.6 hr to fully
discharge a 50 A-hr battery.
5. What maximum current can a car battery provide? Ads for batteries tell
us that: "600 cold-cranking amps." Some batteries can produce as much as
1000 A. They are intended for use either at very high temperatures (where
they very readily discharge due to non-electricity-producing chemical re-
actions) or at very low temperatures (where all chemical reactions~even
those producing electricity~are suppressed).
6. What is the electrical resistance r of a car battery? We can estimate it, using
the maximum current and the concept of impedance matching (of the bat-
tery and the starting motor). In (R.2) we use 12 V for the battery, a current of
600 A, and a total resistance of the impedance-matched battery and starting
motor of R - r § r = 2r. This leads to r - R / 2 - A V / 2 I = 0.01 ~. A battery
may be characterized by its emf, its "charge," and its internal resistance.
7. Which provides electrical energy more cheaply, the battery company or the
electric company? The electric company~by about a factor of 1001. This
is why we don't light our houses with giant flashlights. We use batteries
primarily because they are portable sources of electrical energy.
8. Why do voltaic cells run down? They obtain their energy from chemical
reactions at the terminals (called the electrodes). Material at the electrodes
and in the interior of the voltaic cell (called the electrolyte) are consumed by
the chemical reactions.
9. What is the difference between the way electric charge is carried in a wire
and in a voltaic cell? In a wire, negatively charged electrons carry the electric
charge. In a voltaic cell, ions (which are much more massive than electrons
and can be either positive or negative) carry the electric charge.
10. If a battery is thought of as a "pump" for electricity, where in the battery
is the pump located? Each of the two electrode-electrolyte interfaces, at
the positive and negative terminals, serves as a pump. Small AA cells and
larger D cells have the same chemistry, and thus the same pump strength
per unit surface area of their electrodes. But the much larger D cell has a
much larger charge in its electrolytes and electrodes. D and AA cells have
about the same internal resistance.
11. Does a 9 V battery work on a different principle than a 1.5 V AA cell? No.
Open up a 9 V battery and you will find six 1.5 V cells connected in series
(the positive terminal of one is connected to the negative terminal of the
next). Note that not all 1.5 V cells employ the same chemical reactions.
12. How do jumper cables work? They connect two batteries in parallel (both of
the positive terminals are connected, and both of the negative terminals are
connected). Then both batteries can provide electric power to the starting
motor.
10 Review/Preview = Electricity: Its Uses and Its Visualization

R~ Two Practice Exam Questions


The two questions that follow have consistently produced an enormous variety of
individually unique incorrect answers, revealing an equally enormous variety of
individually unique incorrect conceptions about the subject of electricity. After
posing them, we will answer these questions explicitly, and in the process (we
hope) establish a common language.

1. A rock 'n' roll band is playing a concert on an electrically conducting platform


(e.g., steel) that is electrically insulated (e.g., dry wood) from the rest of the
concert hall. During the concert, the platform is accidentally connected to a
high-voltage ac source; perhaps there is a short connecting the platform to
the "hot" lead of a frayed wire from a guitar amplifier. The band members'
hair stands on end. Why? (Note: at 120 V, unless the power is direct current,
the surface of the body is unlikely to charge up enough for hair to stand on
end; let's assume it happens anyway, for argument's sake.)
2. At the end of the concert, the band must descend from the platform. Al-
though it would be safer simply to cut off the power, let us assume this
cannot be done. Should the band members jump down from or step off the
platform?

To answer these questions, which require no quantitative knowledge of elec-


tricity, we set up the mental picture of the electric fluid model, based on an
analogy between electricity and water, both of them fluids. Although this anal-
ogy is not perfect, it was taught with enthusiasm by no less a practitioner of
the electrical science than J. J. Thomson. Thomson's careful measurement, in
1897, of the ratio of electrical charge to inertial mass for the emissions from
diverse cathode materials, convinced scientists that there was a unique common
component to all "cathode rays"~the electron. In 1936, as an elder statesman of
physics, Thomson wrote:

[The service of the electric fluid concept] to the science of electricity, by suggest-
ing and co-ordinating experiments, can hardly be overestimated. [For, in the
laboratory,] if we move a piece of brass or decrease the effect we are observing,
we do not fly to the higher mathematics, but use the simple conception of the
electric fluid which would tell us as much as we wanted to know in a few
seconds.

In order to avoid having to "fly to the higher mathematics" (which even


mathematically sophisticated scientists sometimes would like to avoid), we too
will employ the "conception of the electric fluid." The reader will be warned
when the analogy breaks down, at which time the model will be modified to
produce a more precise physical picture of the phenomenon of electricity. Science
constantly develops and refines its most important ideas.

Ro6 The Electric Fluid Model


The version of the electric fluid model presented here is an extension of the orig-
inal version by Franklin. The present one is more accurate since it is based on our
R. 6 The Electric Fluid Model 11

Table R.1 Equivalences for the electric fluid model

~~#~;~;~;;~@~
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1. Amount (mass) Amount (electric charge)


2. Pressure Electrical potential or voltage
3. Reservoir Capacitor
4. Mass flow (mass current) Charge flow (electric current)
5. Pipes and resistance to mass flow Wires and resistance to charge flow
6. Pumps Batteries or the electric company
7. Reservoir breakdown Electrical breakdown (e.g., sparking)

current knowledge of the microscopic constitution of matter. Under the circum-


stances, Franklin's conception was remarkably good; moreover, in the scientific
tradition, he modified his views, as new facts became available.
Broadly speaking, we can set up the equivalences shown in Table R. 1.

1. Amount: Mass and Electric Charge Ordinary matter has a number of prop-
erties, the most important of which for our purposes are mass and electric
charge. Mass M (measured in kilograms, kg) is a positive quantity, and mass
density (mass per unit volume, kg/m 3) is also a positive quantity. Water has
a background mass density that is always positive, and increases only slightly
when the system is put under pressure. Moreover, the addition of matter can
only increase the amount of mass.
On the other hand, electric charge can be either positive or negative. The
net electric charge Q is the algebraic sum of the positive and negative electric
charges. Increases in the net electric charge can
occur either by increasing the amount of posi-
tive charge or by decreasing the amount of nega-
tive charge. The addition of matter can increase,
Franklin, on the other hand, considered decrease, or leave unchanged the amount of elec-
ordinary matter to be immobile and un- tric charge. Ordinary atoms have zero net charge:
charged, sort of a sponge for the pos- they have positive charge in their relatively
itively charged electric fluid. The most massive nuclei and an equal amount of negative
important aspect of Franklin's concep- charge in the relatively light electrons surround-
tion is that there is an electric fluid that
ing the nucleus. The less massive electrons can
can be neither created nor destroyed,
and therefore it is conserved.
be stripped off or added to an atom or collection
of atoms (e.g., a solid).

To Franklin we owe the concept of an excess or deficit of electrical fluid, the idea of
connecting electrical storage devices in series and in parallel, a deep appreciation of
the distinction between conductors and insulators, and the lightning rod. He is also
responsible for bifocals, the rocking chair, the heat-retaining Franklin stove, daylight-
saving time, and a host of other inventive ideas. It was Franklin's fame as a scientistm
many of his electrical experiments were performed in the court of the French King Louis
XVmthat later gave him the credibility in France to plead the case of the American
Colonies against the British.

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