AMPERES EXPERIMENT

John Doe, Jane Doe Physics Department, The College of Hogwarts, nine and three quaters, UK 30 February 2011

Abstract In this experiment, we measured the degree of separation of two parallel current carrying wires when there is a current flowing in both of them in opposite direction. One of the wire loops was held fix in the frame while a second loop was allowed to oscillate freely. By performing two experiments where the current and distance were varied in each case we found a strong correlation between the weight and the square of the current and also between the weight and the weight and the distance of separation of the two wires (The slopes of the graphs had an accuracy of 15% and 0.56% respectively).

1. Introduction While Coulombs Law describes the force between two stationary charges, it does not describe the behavior of the charges when they are in motion. Andre-Marie Ampere investigated that the force of attraction or repulsion between current carrying wires (charges in motion) is directly proportional to the product of the magnitude of the current and inversely proportional to the distance between them. James Clerk Maxwell as later put this theory into mathematical form, which is given by:

Where, FB is Magnetic Force l is length of wire

0 is SI proportionality constant
i is current out from first wire I is current into second wire s is distance between two wires

2. Theory The purpose of this experiment was to investigate Amperes law and observe how charges moving in opposite along parallel wires. According the right hand rule (F=I X B), when current is moving up the wire, the magnetic field is in clockwise direction when seen from above. This implies that there is a magnetic force of the first wire on the second wire. From the right hand rule we can conclude that the force of first wire on the second wire is repulsive and vice versa. The above equation implies that the force equals the weight of suspended mass. B1

I1

B2 on 1

And since there is equal current flowing through the loops, I = i. Hence the equation is:

Where W is the suspended weights and N is the number of turns in the fixed copper coil. This gives rise to two further proportionalities i.e. W i2 and W 1/s, which are the basis for the two experiments we performed in lab. Plotting and interpreting the graphs for W vs i2 and W vs 1/s we can investigate the veracity of Amperes law.

3. Procedure The experiment was performed in two parts for the two different equations. The apparatus was set up as shown in the figure: We checked for the balance loop to be parallel to the current loop so that there is no skew in the forces along the wire. We balanced this by moving the counterweight as required. Next we calibrated the HP power supply to a constant potential difference to 5 Volts. For the first experiment we kept the loops of wire at a fixed distance (s) and varied current from a range of 3A to 6A. For the second experiment we altered the distance between the two current carrying wires (s) from 1.5cm to 4cm while maintaining a steady current of 5A. To balance the rod after the current in the loops separates the two wire components, we used small weights (wires) if varying length (1cm -10cm). We hung it at the notch that is at equal distance away from the pivot as the height of the current carrying loop. For the equilibrium position to be precise, we first set the rod at equilibrium with marked its

position. Later in the experiment when the rod deviated from the equilibrium position we just added a few weights on the notch till it came back to its equilibrium position. After taking several sets of data we plotted several different graphs on Igor Pro and analyzed the slope of the linear fit line.

4. Results Experiment 1 (W i2) We took 11 sets of readings for a range of current from 3A to 6A. We then plugged in the readings into igor pro and calculated the square of the current (given in the formula), and log of the weight and log of current.
Point 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Weight (cm) 7 9 12 14 16 19 21 24 27 30 33 Current (A) 3 3.5 4 4.25 4.5 4.75 5 5.25 5.5 5.75 6 I2 (A2) 9 12.25 16 18.0625 20.25 27.5625 25 30.25 30.25 33.0625 36 log(W) 0.84509804 0.954242509 1.079181246 1.146128036 1.204119983 1.278753601 1.322219295 1.380211242 1.431363764 1.477121255 1.51851394 log(I) 0.477121255 0.544068044 0.602059991 0.62838893 0.653212514 0.67669361 0.698970004 0.720159303 0.740362689 0.759667845 0.77815125

Table 2.1: Table shows the experimental value of Weight, current, square of the current, log of weight and log of current. After we plugged in the values for weight and current and calculated the values, we plotted graphs for weight vs current squared and log(W) vs log(I).

Graph 2.1: graph that shows the linear fit for W vs I2. The dotted line that passes through the origin has been forced to pass through the origin.

Graph 2.2: graph that shows the linear for log(W) vs log(I). The slope when the linear fit is forced through the origin is 1.8815 and the slope for the actual fit is 2.3222. The data points in graph 2.1 and graph 2.2 are somewhat precise as they are close to the linear fit. However, from graph 2.1 we can see that the linear fit does not pass through the

origin indicating that there is a constant systematic error. From equation we expect the slope for graph 2.2 to be 2, but the slope of the linear fit forced through the origin is 1.8815 and the slope of the actual line is 2.3222. This indicates that the slope of the lines deviate from the actual value at a constant rate. This proves that the equation is valid however there was some systematic error in the experiment.

Experiment 1 (W 1/s) In this experiment we varied the distance of separation between the two loops from 1.5cm to 4cm. We took eight readings for different values of s and plotted two graphs of W vs s-1 and log(W) vs log(s).
Point 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Distance/s (cm) 1.5 1.8 2 2.5 2.7 3 3.5 4 Weight (cm) 28 21 20 17 16 14 11 10 s-1 (cm-1) 0.666666667 0.555555556 0.5 0.4 0.37037037 0.333333333 0.285714286 0.25 log(W) 1.447158031 1.322219295 1.301029996 1.230448921 1.204119983 1.146128036 1.041392685 1 log(s) 0.176091259 0.255272505 0.301029996 0.397940009 0.431363764 0.477121255 0.544068044 0.602059991

Table 2.2: Table that shows experimental results for the second experiment. After we calculated the values for s-1, log(W) and log(s) we plotted the graphs and took linear fits of the points.

Graph 2.3: graph that shows the points along with error bars for W vs s-1 and the linear fit.

Graph 2.4: graph that shows the relation between log(W) and log(s). The slope of the linear fit is -1.0056 -1.00. The graphs describe the inverse relation between weight and the distance. The linear fit of graph 2.3 is within 1cm error range and passes through the origin, which implies that the experiment was precise and fairly accurate. The linear fit of graph 2.4 has a slope of -

1.0056, which is close to the expected value of the equation i.e. -1. This shows that the overall data is close to the actual value. Hence this verifies the equation.

5. Conclusion The two experiments show that there is a relation between Force (Weight), current and the distance of separation. The graphs for the first experiment show that there is a consistent deviation from the actual data. We noticed that the voltage was not consistent, however since this would not have a lot of effect on the experiment, we concluded that the source of error was parallax error. Hence from this experiment, we can conclude that Amperes law is valid for any pair of current carrying wires.