Gravitational Field vs Electric Field
Electric field and gravitational field are two concepts bound with the field model. Both of these fields are models that are used to explain the behavior of charges, magnets and masses. These field models are very important in fields such as electrical engineering, electronic engineering, physics, astrophysics, cosmology, chemistry and various other. A proper understanding of these concepts can be really helpful for any scholar in physics and related fields.
Electric Field
An electric field and electric charge are like the “chicken and egg” problem. One is required to describe the other. An electric field is said to be produced by all electric charges whether they are moving or stationary. An electric field can also be produced using any time varying magnetic fields. There are several important factors of electric fields. These are electric field intensity, electric field potential, and electric flux density. The electric field intensity is defined as the force on a unit point charge from the electric field. This is given by the formula E = Q/4πεr2, where Q is the charge, ε is the electric permittivity of the medium and r is the distance of the point from the point Q charge. The electric potential is defined as the amount of work on a unit charge that is required to bring the unit charge from infinity to the given point. The equation for calculating this is V = Q/4πεr where all the symbols have the previous meanings. Another very important aspect of the electric field is the electric flux density. Electric flux density is a measurement of the number of electric field lines going perpendicular to a given unit area surface. Gauss’ law and Ampere’s law are very important when studying these electric fields.
Gravitational Field
Gravitational field is produced by any mass in the space. There are very important concepts in gravitational fields such as gravitational field intensity and gravitational potential. The gravitational field intensity is also referred as the gravitational acceleration. It can be defined as the force on a unit mass by the given mass. It is calculated using the formula g = GM/r2, where G is the universal gravitational constant and r is the distance. The gravitational potential can be defined as the amount of work that is required to be done on a unit mass in order to bring it from infinity to the given point.
|
What is the difference between electric field and gravitational field? – Gravitational fields can occur only due to mass, but electric fields can occur due to charges and time varying magnetic fields. – Properties such as electric field intensity or electric field potential can be either negative or positive because electric charges have both positive and negative values. There is no negative mass, therefore gravitational field intensity can only be positive, while gravitational field potential can only be of negative values. – Electric field lines can be defined because field lines have starts and ends at opposite poles. Since gravitational poles does not exist, gravitational field lines cannot be defined.
|