Electrostaatiline

Electrostatiline, known in English as electrostatics, is the branch of physics that studies electric charges at rest and the forces and fields they produce. It covers how charges distribute on conductors and insulators, and how static electric fields interact with materials.

Coulomb's law states that the force between two point charges is proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of their separation. The electric field is the force per unit charge created by charges, and the electric potential measures the work required to move a unit charge to a point in the field. Gauss's law relates the electric flux through a closed surface to the enclosed charge and is especially useful for symmetric charge distributions.

In electrostatic situations, conductors reach electrostatic equilibrium, with excess charge residing on the surface and the interior electric field vanishing. Insulators can sustain internal charge distributions. Capacitance describes a system's ability to store energy in the electric field, as in capacitors.

Applications include capacitors in electronic circuits, electrostatic precipitators for air cleaning, electrostatic painting and coating, xerography (the basis of photocopiers), and some inkjet and laser printing techniques that use charged particles steered by electric fields.

Static electricity can arise from friction or separation of materials, known as the triboelectric effect. Objects can become charged and attract or repel others. Safety considerations include grounding to prevent shocks and sparks, and controlling humidity to reduce charge buildup.

Electrostatics is the static-field limit of electromagnetism; it is described by Gauss's law and Coulomb's law and forms the basis for the full Maxwell equations in the time-independent case.