Equipotential Sentence Examples

The presence, however, of apparatus or observers upsets the conditions, while above uneven ground or near a tree or a building the equipotential surfaces cease to be horizontal.

If the shape of the equipotential surfaces near it is influenced by trees, shrubs or grass, their influence will vary throughout the year.

Above the level plain of absolutely smooth surface, devoid of houses or vegetation, the equipotential surfaces under normal conditions would be strictly horizontal, and if we could determine the potential at one metre above the ground we should have a definite measure of the potential gradient at the earth's surface.

In an ordinary climate a building seems to be practically at the earth's potential; near its walls the equipotential surfaces are highly inclined, and near the ridges they may lie very close together.

This only means that the equipotential surfaces are crowded together, just as they are near the ridge of a house.

Bearing this in mind, one can readily imagine how close together the equipotential surfaces must lie near the summit of a high sharp mountain peak.

If the current is interrupted or alternating, and if a telephone receiver has its terminals connected to a separate metallic circuit joined by earth plates at two other places to the earth, not on the same equipotential surface of the first circuit, sounds will be heard in the telephone due to a current passing through it.

Canal system of flow lines of current through the sea, and these might be detected by any other ships furnished with two plates dipping into the sea at stem and stern, and connected by a wire having a telephone in its circuit, provided that the two plates were not placed on the same equipotential surface of the original current flow lines.

If V denote the potential, F the resultant force, X, Y, Z, its components parallel to the co-ordinate axes and n the line along which the force is directed, then - sn = F, b?= X, - Sy = Y, -s Surfaces for which the potential is constant are called equipotential surfaces.

The resultant magnetic force at every point of such a surface is in the direction of the normal (n) to the surface; every line of force therefore cuts the equipotential surfaces at right angles.

The potential due to a single pole of strength m at the distance r from the pole is V = m/ r, (7) the equipotential surfaces being spheres of which the pole is the centre and the lines of force radii.

The potential due to a thin magnet at a point whose distance from the two poles respectively is r and r' is V =m(l/r=l/r') (8) When V is constant, this equation represents an equipotential surface.

The equipotential surfaces are two series of ovoids surrounding the two poles respectively, and separated by a plane at zero potential passing perpendicularly through the middle of the axis.

Hall Efect.-If an electric current is passed along a strip of thin metal, and the two points at opposite ends of an equipotential line are connected with a galvanometer, its needle will of course not be deflected.

These surfaces are called "equipotential" or "level surfaces," and we may so locate them that the potential difference between two adjacent surfaces is one unit of potential; that is, it requires one absolute unit of work (I erg) to move a small body charged with one unit of electricity from one surface to the next.

The surface of a charged conductor is an equipotential surface, because when the electric charge is in equilibrium there is no tendency for electricity to move from one part to the other.

We may describe, through all the points in an electric field which have the same potential, surfaces called equipotential surfaces, and these will be everywhere perpendicular or orthogonal to the lines of electric force.

Then the charge at A together with the induced surface charge on the plate makes a certain field of electric force on the left of the plate PO, which is a zero equipotential surface.

Let us assume the field divided up into tubes of electric force as already explained, and these cut normally by equipotential surfaces.

Hence the equipotential surfaces cannot cut each other.

Suppose that we have any distribution of electricity at rest over conductors, and that we know the potential at all points and consequently the level or equipotential surfaces.

Take any equipotential surface enclosing the whole of the electricity, and suppose this to become an actual sheet of metal connected to the earth.

Therefore, whatever may be the distribution of electric force produced by the charges inside taken alone, it can be exactly imitated for all space outside the metal surface if we suppose the inside charge removed and a distribution of electricity of the same sign made over the metal surface such that its density follows the law Q = - (1 /47r)dU/dn (27), where dUldn is the electric force at that point on the closed equipotential surface considered, due to the original charge alone.