CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Mehak student of Class

XII A of Bal Bhavan Public School, Delhi have
successfully completed her project on the
topic Estimation of Charge Induced on each of
the two identical styro foam balls suspended
in a vertical plane by making use of
Coulomb's law in partial fulfillment of the
requirement for the subject of XII Class,
Physics in the session 2024-25.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my gratitude to my respected

Principal Mr. Vividh Gupta, Bal Bhavan Public School,
Delhi and my physics teacher Ms. Nitika Khandelwal for
permitting me to select this topic and utilize all the
necessary facilities of the institution. I am also thankful to
all the faculty & staff members of our School for their
kind co-operation and help. Lastly, I would like to express
my deep appreciation towards my classmates and my
indebtedness to my parents for providing us the moral
support and encouragement.
 CONTENT
➢ Declaration
➢ Certificate
➢ Acknowledgement
➢ Objective
➢ Introduction
• Coulomb
• Coulomb's Law
• Electric Charge

➢ Experiment
• Aim
• Material Required
• Theory
• Procedure
• Observations
• Calculations
• Result
• Precautions
• Sources of Error
➢ Bibliography
 OBJECTIVE

To estimate the charge induced on each of

the two identical styro foam (or pith) balls
suspended in a vertical plane by making use
of Coulomb's law.

INTRODUCTION
 COULOMB
Coulomb graduated in November 1761 from École royale
du génie de Mézières. Over the next twenty years he was
posted to a variety of locations where he was involved in
engineering - structural, fortifications, soil mechanics, as
well as other fields of engineering. His first posting was
to Brest but in February 1764 he was sent to Martinique,
in the West Indies, where he was put in charge of building
the new Fort Bourbon and this task occupied him until
June 1772. On his return to France, Coulomb was sent to
Bouchain. However, he now began to write important
works on applied mechanics, and he presented his first
work to the Académie des Sciences in Paris in 1773. In
1779 Coulomb was sent to Rochefort to collaborate with
the Marquis de Monta Lembert in constructing a fort
made entirely from wood near Ile d'Aix. During his
period at Rochefort, Coulomb carried on his research into
mechanics, in particular using the shipyards in Rochefort
as laboratories for his experiments.
Upon his return to France, with the rank of Captain, he
was employed at La Rochelle, the Isle of Aix and
Cherbourg. He discovered an inverse relationship of the
force between electric charges and the square of its
distance, later named after him as Coulomb's law.

COULOMB'S LAW:
In 1785 Augustine de Coulomb investigated the attractive
and repulsive forces between charged objects,
experimentally formulating what is now referred to as
Coulomb’s Law:
“The magnitude of the electric force that a particle exerts on
another is
directly proportional to the product of their charges and
inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them.”
Mathematically, this electrostatic F acting on two charged
particles (q1, q2) is expressed as

where r is the separation distance

between the objects and k is a constant
of proportionality, called the Coulomb
constant, k = 9×109 Nm2/C2. This formula
gives us the magnitude of the force
as well as direction by noting a positive
force as attractive and a negative force
as repulsive. Noting that like charges
repel each
other and opposite charges attracting
each other, Coulomb measured the force
between the objects, small metal coated
balls, by using a torsion balance like the

balance used to
measure gravitational forces.

ELECTRIC CHARGE
 Historically the credit of discovery of the fact
that amber rubbed with wool or silk cloth
attracts light objects goes to Thales of
Miletus, Greece, around 600 BC. The name
electricity is coined from the Greek
word Elektron meaning amber. The
experiments on pith balls suggested that
there are two kinds of electrification, and we
find that (i) like charges
repel and (ii) unlike charges attract each
other. The experiments also demonstrated
that the charges are transferred from the rods
to the pith balls on contact. It is said that the
pith balls are electrified or are charged by
contact. The property which differentiates the
two kinds of charges is called the polarity of
charge.
 EXPERIMENT

AIM –
To estimate the charge induced on each of
the two identical styro foam (or pith) balls
suspended in a vertical plane by making use
of coulomb9s law.

MATERIALS REQUIRED -
• Small size identical balls (pitch or soft
plastic)
• Physical balance or electronic balance
• Half meter Scale
• Cotton thread
• Stand
• Glass rod (or plastic rod)
• Silk cloth (or woolen cloth)
 THEORY
The fundamental concept in electrostatics is
electrical charge. We are all familiar with the
fact that rubbing two materials together - for
example, a rubber comb on cat fur - produces
a “static” charge. This process is called
charging by friction. Surprisingly,
The exact physics of the process of charging
by friction is poorly understood. However, it is
known that the making and breaking of
contact between the two materials transfers
the charge. The charged particles which make
up the universe come in three
kinds: positive, negative, and neutral. Neutral
particles do not interact with electrical forces.
Charged particles exert electrical and
magnetic forces on one another, but if the
charges are stationary, the mutual force is
quite simple in form and is given by
Coulomb's Law:

where F is the electrical force between any two

stationary charged particles with charges q1 and
q2(measured in coulombs), r is the separation
between the charges (measured in meters), and k
is a constant of nature (equal to 9×109 Nm2/C2 in SI
units). The study of the Coulomb forces among
arrangements of stationary charged particles is
called electrostatics. Coulomb's Law describes
three properties of the electrical force:
1. The force is inversely proportional to the square
of the distance between the charges and is
directed along the straight line that connects their
centers.
2. The force is proportional to the product of the
magnitude of the charges.
3. Two particles of the same charge exert a
repulsive force on each other, and two particles of
opposite charge exert an attractive force on each
other. Most of the common objects we deal with in
the macroscopic
(human-sized) world is electrically neutral.

They are composed of atoms that consist of

negatively charged electrons moving in quantum
motion around a positively charged nucleus. The
total negative charge of the electrons is normally
exactly equal to the total positive charge of the
nuclei, so the atoms (and therefore the entire
object) have no net electrical charge. When we
charge a material by friction, we are transferring
some of the electrons from one material to
another. Materials such as metals are conductors.
Each metal atom contributes one or two electrons
that can move freely through the material. A
conductor will carry an electrical current. Other
materials such as glass are insulators. Their
electrons are bound tightly and cannot move.
Charge sticks on an insulator but does not move
freely through it. A neutral particle is not affected
by electrical forces. Still, a charged object will
attract a neutral macroscopic object through
electrical polarization. For example, if a negatively
charged rod is brought close to an isolated, neutral
insulator, the electrons in the atoms of the
insulator will be pushed slightly away from the
negative rod, and the positive nuclei will be
attracted slightly toward the negative rod. We say
that the rod has induced polarization in the
insulator, but its net charge is still zero. The
polarization of charge in the insulator is small, but
now it’s positive charge is a bit closer to the
negative rod, and its negative charge is a bit
farther away. Thus, the positive charge is attracted
to the rod more strongly than the negative charge
is repelled, and there is an overall net attraction. If
the negative rod is brought near an isolated,
neutral conductor, the conductor will also be
polarized. In the conductor, electrons are free to
move through the material, and some of them are
repelled over to the opposite surface of the
conductor, leaving the surface near the negative
rod with a net positive charge. The conductor has
been polarized, and will now be attracted to the
charged rod.

Now if we connect a conducting wire or any other

conducting material from the polarized conductor
to the ground, we provide a “path” through which
the electrons can move. Electrons will move along
this path to the ground. If the wire or path is later
disconnected, the conductor is left with a net
positive charge. The conductor was charged
without being touched with the charged rod, and
its charge is opposite that of the rod. This
procedure is called charging by induction.
Let the force between two stationary charges be F

PROCEDURE -
1. Measure the mass (m) of each of the two
identical pith balls using a physical balance.
2. Hang the two balls from a rigid support
using light silk or cotton threads of same
length 8l9.
3. Rub the glass rod silk cloth to induce
charge on it. Now touch the glass rod with
both the pith balls together so that equal
charge is induced on both the balls.
4. When left freely, the two balls will repel
each other. Measure the distance between
the balls when they are at rest. Note down the
distance.
5. To change the charge on ball, take third
uncharged ball touch it to any one of the two
balls and take the third ball away, and repeat
step 4.
6. Take other uncharged suspended with
other uncharged 4th ball and take the 4th ball
away and repeat step 4.
 OBSERVATIONS -
Mass of the pith balls m = ____ gm.
Radius of the ball a = ____ cm.
Length of thread l = ____ cm
S.I No. Charge on Charge on Distance
ball ball btw the
B1 B2 two balls
1.
2.
3.
4.