Free, Bound and Total Charge
In dielectric materials, the total charge of an object can separated into "free" and "bound" charges.
Bound charges set up electric dipoles in response to an applied electric field E, and polarize other nearby dipoles tending to line them up, the net accumulation of charge from the orientation of the dipoles is the bound charge. They are called bound because they cannot be removed: in the dielectric material the charges are the electrons bound to the nuclei.
Free charges are the excess charges which can move into electrostatic equilibrium, i.e. when the charges are not moving and the resultant electric field is independent of time, or constitute electric currents.
Read more about this topic: Charge Density
Famous quotes containing the words bound, total and/or charge:
“I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Yet I would bear my shortcomings
With meet tranquility,
But for the charge that blessed things
I’d liefer not have be.
O, doth a bird deprived of wings
Go earth-bound wilfully!”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)