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Charge distribution


In electromagnetism, charge density is a measure of electric charge per unit volume of space, in one, two or three dimensions. More specifically: the linear, surface, or volume charge density is the amount of electric charge per unit length, surface area, or volume, respectively. The respective SI units are C·m−1, C·m−2 or C·m−3.

Like any density, charge density can depend on position, but charge and thus charge density can be negative. It should not be confused with the charge carrier density, the number of charge carriers (e.g. electrons, ions) in a material per unit volume, not including the actual charge on the carriers

In chemistry, it can refer to the charge distribution over the volume of a particle; such as a molecule, atom or ion. Therefore, a lithium cation will carry a higher charge density than a sodium cation due to the lithium cation's having a smaller ionic radius, even though sodium has more protons (11) than lithium (3).

Following are the definitions for continuous charge distributions.

The linear charge density is the ratio of an infinitesimal electric charge dQ (SI unit: C) to an infinitesimal line element,


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