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Electric potential from multiple charges

In this video David shows how to find the total electric potential at a point in space due to multiple charges. Created by David SantoPietro.

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  • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user grantpetersen87
    David says that potential is scalar, because PE is scalar -- but vectors must come into play when we place a charge at point "P" and release it?

    The calculation for potential at point "P" is +5,250 J/C, so if we place a +1 C charge there, then it will have 5,250 J of PE. Once we place that +1 C charge there and release it, the 5,250 J of PE will convert into KE and the charge will move -- but it will move in a specific, predictable path -- won't it?

    How can we determine the path that any charge would take upon being placed in that position?
    (31 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user Ramos
    Can the potential at point P be determined by finding the work done in bringing each charge to that point?
    (4 votes)
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  • duskpin ultimate style avatar for user Marcos
    About this whole exercise, we calculated the total electric potential at a point in space (p) relative to which other point in space?
    And the final result tells us that a charge of 1 Coulomb on the point p can do 5250J of work ("displacement against a force") more than any other point?
    Thanks!
    (2 votes)
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  • duskpin tree style avatar for user Devarsh Raval
    In this video, are the values of the electric potential due to all the three charges absolute potential (i.e. with respect to infinity)?
    (1 vote)
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  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user Owen
    So if we're trying to calculate a scalar quantity, we plug in signs based on charge. If we're trying to calculate a vector quantity, we plug in signs based on direction. Correct?
    (2 votes)
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  • leaf green style avatar for user sg60847
    Is there any thing like electric potential energy difference other than electric potential difference ? please answer soon .
    (0 votes)
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    • leaf green style avatar for user ashwinranade99
      Sorry, this isn't exactly "soon", but electric potential difference is the difference in voltages of an object - for example, the electric potential difference of a 9V battery is 9V, which is the difference between the positive and negative terminals of the battery.

      Electric potential energy difference would be the difference in potential energies at a point in space - but I'm not really sure what it would look like. I doubt you'll ever see the term "electric potential energy difference" anywhere so no need to worry about that :-)
      (4 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Albert Inestine
    If i have a charged spherical conductor in side another bigger spherical shell and i made a contact between them what will happen ?
    does they balance at equal electric potential ?
    or the charge goes to the outer shell ?
    and why?
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user megalodononon
    Why is the electric potential a scalar? Which way would a particle move?
    (1 vote)
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  • duskpin seedling style avatar for user Cayli
    1. If the distance given in a problem is in cm (rather than m), how does that effect the "j/c" unit (if at all)?
    2. If I wanted to calculate how much energy it takes to move one of these charges from its current place to a place a few meters over, could I just say that movement would take the EP measurement of one point (ex: 2,250J/C for V1) times the amount of Coulumbs the point has? AKA: How would I calculate the amount of energy needed to move a point?
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user emmanuelasiamah49
    2. Two point charges each of magnitude q are fixed at the points (0, +a) and
    (0, –a) in the Cartesian coordinate system.
    i. Draw a diagram showing the positions of the charges.
    ii. What is the potential Vo at the origin?
    iii. Show that the potential at any point on the x-axis the potential is
    given by
       
    2 2 2 2
    0
    0
    1 2
    4 2
    q q V
    a x a x  
      
     
    iv. At what values of x is the potential one half of that at the origin?
    v. Sketch the variation of the potential along the x-axis as a function
    of x.
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

- [Instructor] So imagine you had three charges sitting next to each other, but they're fixed in place. So somehow these charges are bolted down or secured in place, we're not gonna let'em move. But we do know the values of the charges. We've got a positive one microcoulomb charge, a positive five microcoulomb charge, and a negative two microcoulomb charge. So a question that's often asked when you have this type of scenario is if we know the distances between the charges, what's the total electric potential at some point, and let's choose this corner, this empty corner up here, this point P. So we want to know what's the electric potential at point P. Since we know where every charge is that's gonna be creating an electric potential at P, we can just use the formula for the electric potential created by a charge and that formula is V equals k, the electric constant times Q, the charge creating the electric potential divided by r which is the distance from the charge to the point where it's creating the electric potential. So notice we've got three charges here, all creating electric potential at point P. So what we're really finding is the total electric potential at point P. And to do that, we can just find the electric potential that each charge creates at point P, and then add them up. So in other words, this positive one microcoulomb charge is gonna create an electric potential value at point P, and we can use this formula to find what that value is. So we get the electric potential from the positive one microcoulomb charge, it's gonna equal k, which is always nine times 10 to the ninth, times the charge creating the electric potential which in this case is positive one microcoulombs. Micro means 10 to the negative six and the distance between this charge and the point we're considering to find the electric potential is gonna be four meters. So from here to there, we're shown is four meters. And we get a value 2250 joules per coulomb, is the unit for electric potential. But this is just the electric potential created at point P by this positive one microcoulomb charge. All the rest of these charges are also gonna create electric potential at point P. So if we want the total electric potential, we're gonna have to find the contribution from all these other charges at point P as well. So the electric potential from the positive five microcoulomb charge is gonna also be nine times 10 to the ninth, but this time, times the charge creating it would be the five microcoulombs and again, micro is 10 to the negative six, and now you gotta be careful. I'm not gonna use three meters or four meters for the distance in this formula. I've got to use distance from the charge to the point where it's creating the electric potential. And that's gonna be this distance right here. What is that gonna be? Well if you imagine this triangle, you got a four on this side, you'd have a three on this side, since this side is three. To find the length of this side, you can just do three squared plus four squared, take a square root, which is just the Pythagorean Theorem, and that's gonna be nine plus 16, is 25 and the square root of 25 is just five. So this is five meters from this charge to this point P. So we'll plug in five meters here. And if we plug this into the calculator, we get 9000 joules per coulomb. So we've got one more charge to go, this negative two microcoulombs is also gonna create its own electric potential at point P. So the electric potential created by the negative two microcoulomb charge will again be nine times 10 to the ninth. This time, times negative two microcoulombs. Again, it's micro, so 10 to the negative six, but notice we are plugging in the negative sign. Negative charges create negative electric potentials at points in space around them, just like positive charges create positive electric potential values at points in space around them. So you've got to include this negative, that's the bad news. You've gotta remember to include the negative. The good news is, these aren't vectors. Notice these are not gonna be vector quantities of electric potential. Electric potential is not a vector quantity. It's a scalar, so there's no direction. So I'm not gonna have to break this into components or worry about anything like that up here. These are all just numbers at this point in space. And to find the total, we're just gonna add all these up to get the total electric potential. But they won't add up right if you don't include this negative sign because the negative charges do create negative electric potentials. So what distance do we divide by is the distance between this charge and that point P, which we're shown over here is three meters, which if we solve, gives us negative 6000 joules per coulomb. So now we've got everything we need to find the total electric potential. Again, these are not vectors, so you can just literally add them all up to get the total electric potential. In other words, the total electric potential at point P will just be the values of all of the potentials created by each charge added up. So we'll have 2250 joules per coulomb plus 9000 joules per coulomb plus negative 6000 joules per coulomb. And we could put a parenthesis around this so it doesn't look so awkward. So if you take 2250 plus 9000 minus 6000, you get positive 5250 joules per coulomb. So that's our answer. Recapping to find the total electric potential at some point in space created by charges, you can use this formula to find the electric potential created by each charge at that point in space and then add all the electric potential values you found together to get the total electric potential at that point in space.