Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
– They Come in Two Opposite Varieties
Charges come in positive (+) and negative (-) varieties. The fundamental positive charge carrier is the proton and the negative charge carrier is the electron. Both have a charge of magnitude e = 1.602 × 10-19 Coulombs.
Opposites attract, and likes repel; two positive charges placed near each other will repel, or experience a force which pushes them apart. The same is true of two negative charges. A positive and a negative charge, however, will attract each other.
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The attraction between positive and negative charges is what tends to make most items electrically neutral. Because there are the same number of positive as negative charges in the universe, and the attractive and repulsive forces act the way they do, the charges tend to neutralize, or cancel each other out.
Magnets, similarly, have north and south poles. Two magnetic north poles will repel each other as will two magnetic south poles, but a north pole and south pole will attract each other.
Note that another phenomenon you are likely familiar with, gravity, is not like this. Gravity is an attractive force between two masses. There is only one “type” of mass. It doesn’t come in positive and negative varieties like electricity and magnetism do. And this one type of mass is always attractive and not repulsive.
There is a distinct difference between magnets and charges, however, in that magnets always appear as a dipole. That is, any given magnet will always have a north and south pole. The two poles cannot be separated.
An electric dipole can also be created by placing a positive and negative charge at some small distance apart, but it is always possible to separate these charges again. If you imagine a bar magnet with its north and south poles, and you were to try to cut it in half to make a separate north and south, instead the result would be two smaller magnets, both with their own north and south poles.
2 – Their Relative Strength Compared to Other Forces
If we compare electricity and magnetism to other forces, we see some distinct differences. The four fundamental forces of the universe are the strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational forces. (Note that electric and magnetic forces are described by the same single word – more on this in a bit.)
If we consider the strong force – the force that holds nucleons together inside of an atom – to have a magnitude of 1, then electricity and magnetism have a relative magnitude of 1/137. The weak force – which is responsible for beta decay – has a relative magnitude of 10-6, and the gravitational force has a relative magnitude of 6 × 10-39.
You read that right. It wasn’t a typo. The gravitational force is extremely wimpy compared to everything else. This might seem counterintuitive – after all, gravity is the force that keeps planets in motion and keeps our feet on the ground! But consider what happens when you pick up a paperclip with a magnet or a tissue with static electricity.
The force pulling up the one little magnet or statically charged item can counteract the gravitational force of the entire Earth pulling on the paperclip or tissue! We think of gravity as being so much more powerful not because it is, but because we have the gravitational force of an entire globe acting on us at all times whereas, due to their binary nature, charges and magnets often arrange themselves so that they are neutralized.
3 – Electricity and Magnetism Are Two Sides of the Same Phenomenon
If we look more closely and really compare electricity and magnetism, we see that on a fundamental level they are two aspects of the same phenomenon called electromagnetism. Before we fully describe this phenomenon, lets get a deeper understanding of the concepts involved.
Electric and Magnetic Fields
What is a field? Sometimes it is helpful to think about something that seems more familiar. Gravity, like electricity and magnetism, is also a force that creates a field. Imagine the region of space around the Earth.
Any given mass in space will feel a force that depends on the magnitude of its mass and its distance from the Earth. So we imagine that the space around Earth contains a field, that is, a value assigned to each point in space that gives some indication of how relatively big, and in what direction, a corresponding force would be. The magnitude of the gravitational field a distance r from mass M, for example, is given by the formula