ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the fundamentals that one needs in order to understand electrostatics as both friend and foe. It explores the electrostatic regime in the broad context of Maxwell’s equations and reviews several fundamental concepts, including Coulomb’s law, force-energy relations, triboelectrification, induction charging, particle electrification, and dielectric breakdown. The chapter examines several applications of electrostatics in science and industry and discusses some of the methods used to moderate the effects of unwanted charge. The source of electrostatic charge lies at the atomic level, where a nucleus having a fixed number of positive protons is surrounded by a cloud of orbiting electrons. The number of protons in the nucleus gives the atom its unique identity as an element. Electrostatic phenomena become important when an imbalance exists between positive and negative charges in some region of interest. Sometimes such an imbalance occurs due to the phenomenon of contact electrification.