Test Particles in Plasma Physics or Electrodynamics
In simulations with electromagnetic fields the most important characteristics of a test particle is its electric charge and its mass. In this situation it is often referred to as a test charge.
An electric field is defined by . Multiplying the field by a test charge gives an electric force exerted by the field on a test charge. Note that both the force and the electric field are vector quantities, so a positive test charge will experience a force in the direction of the electric field.
In a magnetic field, the behavior of a test charge is determined by effects of special relativity described by the Lorentz force. In this case, a positive test charge will be deflected clockwise if moving perpendicular to a magnetic field pointing toward you, and counterclockwise if moving perpendicular to a magnetic field directed away from you.
Read more about this topic: Test Particle
Famous quotes containing the words test, particles and/or physics:
“There is a parallel between the twos and the tens. Tens are trying to test their abilities again, sizing up and experimenting to discover how to fit in. They don’t mean everything they do and say. They are just testing. . . . Take a good deal of your daughter’s behavior with a grain of salt. Try to handle the really outrageous as matter-of-factly as you would a mistake in grammar or spelling.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“In another’s sentences the thought, though it may be immortal, is as it were embalmed, and does not strike you, but here it is so freshly living, even the body of it not having passed through the ordeal of death, that it stirs in the very extremities, and the smallest particles and pronouns are all alive with it. It is not simply dictionary it, yours or mine, but IT.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)