Thursday, April 16, 2015

Lab 11: Gauss' Law

We started the day drawing the electric fields of two positive charges with a negative charge. The electric field of a positive charge points outwards while the electric field of a negative charge points inwards. From the enclosed amount of lines entering and exiting the charges we determined that the net flux is proportional to the net charge.

Professor Mason conducted an experiment using the Vandergraff generator and a gated cylinder. Where a negative charge was sent to the cylinder, we assume that the outer foils will move away since all the charges inside the gated cylinder is zero while the charges outside are negative, so that will repel the outer foils.

Professor Mason asked where should one go when is thundering while the individual is inside the car. We said that the person should just remain in the car, because the metal in the car acts as a shield from any external electric field, which prevents the lightning from traveling within the car, and conducts it down to the ground.

We discuss that if we double the radius of a sphere that will affect its circumference by the same amount, also it will affect the area by a factor of 2, and the volume by a factor of 4. In addition, if we halved the radius, the circumference, area, and volume should have the same corresponding proportionality.

Professor Mason started putting things inside the microwave. The first experiment was a steel wool, after being heated up, it made a giant ball of sparks.
When microwaving a fork, it produces sparks on the tips.
Microwaving a CD, causes the aluminum coating on the CD to act as an antenna for radiation, which produces a firework-like display of sparks.
Microwaving a light bulb causes it to light up instead of producing sparks. Also it changes color because the gases inside the bulb reacted to the microwaves, producing a spectrum of colors.

The following picture shows the procedure made to calculate the electric field of a cylinder

Finally we found the gravity of Earth through some substitutions.

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