Why do lines of force never cross

How does the electric force between two charged objects change? How does electric force affect an atom? How can electric forces be measured? How are electric forces and gravity similar? How are electric forces and distance related? How are electric forces and charge related? What is Coulomb's law of electrostatics? See all questions in Electric Force. At each point in space in the absence of any charge , the electric field has a single direction, whereas crossing field lines would somehow indicate the electric field pointing in two directions at once in the same location.

Field lines do cross, or at least intersect, in the sense that they converge on charge. If there is a location with charge, the field lines will converge on that point. However we typically say the field lines terminate on the charge rather than crossing there.

Electric field lines reveal information about the direction and the strength of an electric field within a region of space. If the lines cross each other at a given location, then there must be two distinctly different values of electric field with their own individual direction at that given location. This could never be the case. Every single location in space has its own electric field strength and direction associated with it.

Consequently, the lines representing the field cannot cross each other at any given location in space. For example, in the image below, the lines are intersecting and hence there are two directions for Electric Field. The electric field at any point is the sum of all the fields due to each individual charge in the system.

The field has a magnitude and a direction. The field lines are a representation of the magnitude and direction of the field over an illustrated area. The field lines point in the direction of the field. If lines from two sources were to cross, we could effectively sum the two fields at that point and redraw the field lines with the new direction. Thus, we can say field lines never cross because the sum of two vectors can only have one direction with the exception of the zero vector. Field lines are a visual representation of a mathematical construct, like a graph of a function.

The defining properties of this visual representation are. The second property tells you that the field lines can never cross. If they did the density at the point where they crossed would be infinite, and the implication would be that the field strength is infinite.

This is unphysical. The energy equivalent of 0. Two cylinders A and B of equal capacity are connected to each other via a stop clock. A contains an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure. B is completely evacuated. The entire system is thermally insulated. The stop cock is suddenly opened.

A screw gauge has least count of 0. For which one of the following, Bohr model is not valid? NEET Atoms. A body weighs 72 N on the surface of the earth. What is the gravitational force on it, at a height equal to half the radius of the earth? NEET Gravitation.