Lab 2 - Electric Potential and Electric fields

1. Introduction In Lab 2: Electric Potential and Electric fields, we try to determine the electric field from the measurements of equipotential surfaces. An equipotential surface is a surface with all points that have the same electric potential. In other words, the potential difference between any two points on an equipotential surface is zero. On a graph, we represent these equipotential lines as green lines on a 2D surface as electric field lines radiate away from the positive point charge (or radiate towards a negative point charge). It is highly important to know that electric field lines are always perpendicular to equipotential lines. 2. The experiment/procedure In order to find the electric field, we began this lab by setting up different configurations to get the electric potential of each type of surface with an electric current going directly through the wire to the strips. Using the DAQ we collected .csv files with the recorded electric potential lines through each configuration. We tested the electric potential across the following metal strip configurations: • Dipole; we placed the positive and negative probes on the conductor paper and read the potential without any metal strips