[Physics] Conceptually, why does an electric field not require a charge flowing through it

electric-fieldselectricityelectromagnetism

My son has been asking me a lot about electromagnetism and so I got to read up on it.One of the interesting and hard to grasp (for me at least) concepts is that an electric field will exist even when there is no current flowing.

  • How exactly does this occur?
  • What difference between an electric field with a charge flowing through it and one without? Does the charge flowing through an electric field alter the electric field?
  • What happens to the charged particle as it enters the field? What does it experience as it progresses through the field?

Best Answer

  1. an $E$ field is simply a region in which an $E$ charge experiences a force. therefore when two charges are sufficiently close by, they experience a mutual force. every charge is surrounded by its own $E$ field, in the same way every magnet is surrounded by its own magnetic field (or $B$ field) and every massive particle is surrounded by its own gravitational field. none of these need to be moving to set up a field.

  2. when two charges interact they necessarily alter the shape of the $E$ field, especially between them. however the amount of alteration depends on the magnitude of the charge involved. therefore a negligible third charge placed in between the first two charges will experience a force in a straight line connecting them. but a third charge of equal magnitude will bend the $E$ field.

  3. a charge entering an $E$ field experiences a force known as the Coulomb force. since charges have mass, the observation is that the charge accelerates along the $E$ field line, however that line may be shaped as per (2).

  4. a moving charge (i.e. current) generates a $B$ field around that charge

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