Partners: Joseph Dea
Adrian Capinpin

Plotting Electric Potential Lab
Purpose: To understand and experiment with electric potentials and examine electric fields, from their directions to their strengths and their behavior. Also, to map electric equipotential lines and electric field lines for two-dimensional configurations.
Procedure: Starting the first of two parts of our lab (part A), we began by setting up our equipment. We first set up our conducting paper and pushed two aluminum push pins into each of the two conducting metallic holes on the paper. We then followed by connecting the negative terminal of the power supply to the push pin on the left and the positive terminal to the opposite push pin on the right (see figure below).

After everything was set up we turned the dial of the voltmeter to 20 Volts (V), and proceeded by pushing the tip of our probe in the middle of the conducting paper and adjusted the DC power supply until the voltmeter read 5.00 V. Once we got an accurate reading, we gently used the probe to find points on the conducting paper that also read 5.00 V, generally about 2 cm above the starting position. We proceeded with this technique until we reached the apex of the y coordinate, which was capped at 20.0 cm. Following completion of the superior part of the x-axis, we took our probe and repeated the same procedure for the inferior portion of the x-axis, which extended down to 0 cm. We continued this process for the y-axis as well and also plotted curves ranging between 1.00-8.00 volts and upon completion, our conducting paper had multiple equipotential lines.
For the second part of our lab (part B), we repeated the same identical steps as part A, only the end result was a sketch that revealed equipotential lines that were much more compact, shortening the electric field in comparison to part A.
Results: The results show us that it is expected that the electric field lines run perpendicular to the electric potential lines in experiment A, solidifying a uniform electric field. Meanwhile, experiment B demonstrated how the electric field lines can shift and shorten (more compact) with the electric potential when surrounding a point charge. Additionally, we learned that the data points along the electric field line show how the magnitude of the electric field is calculated from the electric potential.
Calculation:

Conclusion: This experiment adequately addressed the relationships between electric field magnitudes and electric potential as it allowed us to compute the electric field magnitude using the data we gathered from experiments A and B. The experiments showed how the different types of charges associated with the electric field produce varied electric field lines and equipotential lines. In the first experiment, the circular pattern produced from a point charge by the electric potential lines are a nice contrast to our second experiment, where the charge distribution produced a uniform electric field that had nearly straight vertical lines and nearly straight perpendicular electric field lines associated with them. In conclusion, this experiment proved the definition of equipotential lines, where if you move perpendicular to the electric field, the potential does not change.