Lab
8: Electrostatics
There are many ways to test
Electrostatics, but some of the best ways to test and explain them is through
Pith balls and electroscopes. Pith balls are two lightweight “pith” balls suspended from the
strings are attracted to objects with a static electric charge. The pith
balls can also be charged by touching them to an object with a static
electric charge.
Electroscopes are device used to detect the presence of
charge and its relative amount. They are usually constructed with a metal
plate or sphere at the top of a metal post with a metal rod hanging from
the bottom of the post.
These two are charged with
differing charges making them very reactive to differing electrical energy and
charges that come near to them. This can be caused by the movement of the
electrons within the instrument which cause the lighter materials in the
instrument to move towards or away a grounded rod that is brought close to it. These
instruments will react differently but can be easily understood. We
experimented with this in class by grounding several rods with alternating
charges and touching and moving the rod around the instruments to see how they
react. This can be used to discover the charge of the object by checking how
the instruments react, if they are opposite to the object then balls will be
attracted to each other and move towards each other, while if they are similar
to each other they will be pushed away from each other. In turn an electroscope
will move when an electrically charged and grounded object moves near it and
will actually stay in an elevated position due to the electrons being
transferred to the electroscope through the contact.
These two instruments are effective at serving as an effective way to test objects in their own way, pith balls can show whether an object has a positive or negative charge, while a electroscope can show the strength of the charge by how it stays up when charged. Thus these instruments are
very useful when testing for and find unknown charges.
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