The electric charge is the absolute first thing to master when learning electricity and magnetism.  This lecture will quickly show you the key ideas so you can go smoothly through the rest of your course.

Conductors are quite different from insulators, and this lecture quickly shows you how.  I also show you how objects can become charged, including a description of how to use the triboelectric series to determine which object will become positive (or negative) when two materials are rubbed together.

Charge polarization, which occurs when positive and negative charges are separated, explains how insulators can experience an electric force and sets up the foundation for understanding charging by induction in the next lecture.

When you charge an object by induction, you are charging it by using a different charged object but without actually touching the charged object.  Many students misunderstand how this works, and this lecture will set you straight so you can ace this question on your exam.

Coulomb's Law tells us how to calculate the electric force between point charges.  This idea becomes a cornerstone for the rest of the course because the electric force just keeps coming back.

Mastering the electric field, and the idea of the test charge, is one of the most important things you can do to ace your electricity and magnetism course.  This lecture builds heavily on the comparison of the force of gravity and the idea of a gravitational field, to help you relate the electric force and field to something that's easier to grasp.

In this lecture, you will see two ways to determine the electric field caused by a point charge.  Later in your course, you will use this idea to find the electric field from many point charges.

Electric field lines are used to visualize the direction of the electric field caused by one or more electric charges.  This is a nice quick lecture, since it's a fairly straightforward idea.

When you place a moving point charge inside a constant uniform electric field, the result is just like projectile motion, with two big differences!  First, the electric force can be in any direction - unlike gravity, which is typically vertically down.  Second, the electric force direction depends on whether the charge is positive or negative - unlike gravity, in which masses are always attracted to each other.

Explore how to use calculus to determine the electric field of a continuous charge distribution by considering each tiny piece of charge, dq, as a point charge.

Also check the external resources for YouTube videos showing how to derive the electric field of a ring and a disk of uniform charge.

The permittivity constant seems to complicate things now, but it will be used much more in later parts of the course.

Learn the high-level aspects of Gauss' Law that we'll dive into in the following lectures.

Thank you so much for viewing my course!  I hope that it can help boost your physics grade, and I would love to hear your feedback!

Scott

If you would like more information about how I can boost students' physics grades, check out this bonus material.