5.1c Electric field strength

Electric field strength

The term "field strength" refers to the force acting on an object in a field. For electric field strength this is force on a charged object in an electric field. This relationship is given in equation form:

The electric field strength is a property of a point in an electric field. If you know the value of the electric field strength at that point - and you know the magnitude and sign of the charge of your object when placed at that point - then you can simply calculate the product of these two values to give you the force on the obeck. In units of Newtons per Coulomb (NC^-1)

Electric field strength is a vector quantity. If there are several electric charges present then the field strength at a point can be calculated by the vector addition of the contributions from the different sources.