Question

Explain electric dipole in detail.

Answer 1

To understand electric dipole in details, we need to understand its definition and visualize it and along with that, we must know all its physical significance.As the name suggests, dipole must contain two poles, i.e, two oppositely charged polar ends.

Complete answer:
Definition: When two opposite charges of equal magnitude $q$ and $-q$, separated by a distance $d$ form a couple, it is termed as an electric dipole. In space and by default, the direction of an electric dipole is always from a negative charge, $-q$ to a positive charge $q$ and the midpoint of the distance between them, which is $d$, is termed as the centre of the dipole.

Formula: If we have two opposite charges $q$ and $-q$ of equal magnitude and is separated by a distance $d$ then the electric dipole, $\overrightarrow{p}$, then we define electric dipole as the product of the distance between them and magnitude of the charges.
$\overrightarrow{p}=q\overrightarrow{d}$

Physical significance: Apart from electrostatics, the concept of an electric dipole is also popular in chemistry. It is the base of the classification of the polar and nonpolar molecules. There are molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide that fall under the category of zero dipoles, that is the distance between the two charges in these molecules is zero and such types of molecules are termed as non-polar. And molecules with permanent dipole are termed polar molecules.

Note: Electric dipole is a vector quantity and The above formula is just the magnitude of the electric dipole. For the direction of the electric dipole, it must be noted that the direction of the electric dipole is towards the positive charge, that is from negative charge to positive charge.