Helping a confused particle!

A positively charged particle was sitting idle at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system. The particle is then subjected to an electric field E = E 0 cos ( π 2 + ω t ) ı ^ \textbf{E}=E_{0}\cos\big(\frac{\pi}{2}+\omega t\big)\hat{\imath} at time t 0 , t\geq0, where E 0 E_{0} is a positive constant scalar and ω \omega is the angular frequency of oscillation of electric field in rad / sec . \text{rad}/\sec.

What will the particle do after t = 0 ? t=0?

Sit idle Oscillate around the origin Drift towards the direction of ı ^ \hat{\imath} Drift towards the direction of ı ^ -\hat{\imath}

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2 solutions

Atomsky Jahid
Jun 12, 2017

From the definition of electric field, F = q E \textbf{F}=q\textbf{E} and, F = m a \textbf{F}=m\textbf{a} So, a = F m = ı ^ q E 0 m cos ( π 2 + ω t ) = ı ^ a 0 cos ( π 2 + ω t ) \textbf{a}=\frac{\textbf{F}}{m}=\hat{\imath}\frac{qE_{0}}{m}\cos(\frac{\pi}{2}+\omega t)=\hat{\imath}a_{0}\cos(\frac{\pi}{2}+\omega t) Now, we can integrate it to get the velocity of the particle, v = 0 t a d t = ı ^ a 0 0 t cos ( ω t + π 2 ) d t \textbf{v}=\int_{0}^{t}\textbf{a}dt'=\hat{\imath}a_{0}\int_{0}^{t}\cos(\omega t'+\frac{\pi}{2})dt' v = ı ^ a 0 ω ( cos ω t 1 ) \therefore\textbf{v}=\hat{\imath}\frac{a_{0}}{\omega}(\cos \omega t-1) We can further integrate it to get the displacement. But, we don't need to do that for solving this problem. Notice that 2 ( cos ω t 1 ) 0 -2\leq(\cos \omega t-1)\leq0 . Hence, v \textbf{v} always works in the direction of ı ^ -\hat{\imath} . So, the particle will drift towards that direction and its motion will follow a start-and-stop rhythm. [It's like pushing a toy car every time it comes to a stop.Though the analogy is not completely perfect!]

I am wondering if we can do it by analyzing the cosine function instead of rigorous mathematics?

Rohit Gupta - 3 years, 11 months ago

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I actually wrote my solution in that non-rigorous style first. But, I couldn't embed a graph I wanted to. I feared that only verbal explanation (without any picture or visual aid) would cause confusion among the reader. That's why I resorted to using integration to find the velocity. Notice that I didn't use integration for the next step because I thought only verbal explanation would do here.

Atomsky Jahid - 3 years, 11 months ago

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I appreciate your efforts. Rigorous methods give us more information about the motion of the particle.

Rohit Gupta - 3 years, 11 months ago

Isn't the definite integral v = i ao (cos wt-1)/w?

Ali Montecillo - 3 years, 11 months ago

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Oops! Thanks for reporting it.

Atomsky Jahid - 3 years, 11 months ago
Uros Stojkovic
Jun 26, 2017

From the equation E = E 0 cos ( π 2 + ω t ) E=E_{0}\cos (\frac{\pi }{2}+\omega t) , we can see that after t t starts growing from 0 0 , the cos ( π 2 + ω t ) \cos (\frac{\pi }{2}+\omega t) will decrease more and more until it reaches 1 -1 at some moment t 1 t_{1} , so the particle will be drifting towards the direction of ı -\imath .

In fact, the particle will be accelerating with maximum acceleration at t 1 t_{1} , because E \left | E \right | will be increasing over that period. After t 1 t_{1} , the E \left | E \right | will be decreasing but still forcing particle to drift towards the direction of ı -\imath until some moment t 2 t_{2} when cos ( π 2 + ω t ) \cos (\frac{\pi }{2}+\omega t) will equal 0 0 .

Actually, at t 2 t_{2} , the particle will have the greatest speed. After that, acceleration produced by E E will have opposite direction from velocity of a particle, so it will slow it down but not enough to make it oscillate around one point. Generally, it will continue to drift towards the direction of ı -\imath and my prediction is that it will have kind of stop-go movement.

I really liked how you solved the problem just by analysis. This way we don't require any calculus to show that the particle will never come back. Although using the maths we can find much more information like the position of the particle at any time t t .

Rohit Gupta - 3 years, 11 months ago

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Thank you! I was striving to make it as simple as it's possible. However, I agree with you that in order to calculate some more complex things like speed or position of a particle we certainly have to use calculus like @Atomsky Jahid did in his solution.

Uros Stojkovic - 3 years, 11 months ago

I did it just like this.

Adhiraj Dutta - 1 year, 1 month ago

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