ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the genesis of electrostatic fields. It describes the potential energy of charged particles, scalar electric potential due to different sources including that due to a point charge, line charge, surface charge, and the volume charge distributions. It describes the meaning of the conservative field, explains Kirchhoff’s voltage law, and elaborates the concept of infinity or the ground. It tabulates the summary of potential fields. This includes the configurations of equipotential surfaces for different charge distributions, including that for single positive point charge, pair of two opposite point charges, an infinite line charge, a finite line charge, an infinite sheet of charges, and a finite sheet of charges. It describes the field due to a dipole and derives expressions for potential and electric field intensity. It discusses the potential energy of stationary point charges. It includes energy expression in terms of field quantities, expression for energy stored in electrostatic fields, and that of the energy for the displacement of point charges. It also derives analogy of energy stored.
