# Electric Field Calculator

Created by Luciano Mino
Last updated: Aug 24, 2022

Our electric field calculator is an excellent tool to find the magnitude of the electric field produced by a single point charge or a system of them (up to 10).

We paired this calculator with a short text covering everything you need to know about this topic, including:

• Coulomb's law;
• Electric field definition;
• How to calculate the electric field of a single point charge; and
• The electric field equation.

You can also use this tool as an electric charge calculator. Keep reading to learn more!

## What is an electric field?

Before defining an electric field, let's start simpler. What is a field?

A field is a physical quantity associated with every point in time and space. A temperature field of a room at a given instant, for example, gives us information about the temperature at every point of the room.

We can use fields to represent many things, including the gravitational field or the electric field.

### Coulomb's law and electric fields

Coulomb's law expresses the electric force $F$ experienced by two stationary charged particles. In its scalar form, we write it as:

$|F| = \frac{k_{e}|q_{1}||q_{2}|}{r^{2}}$

where:

• $q_{1}$ and $q_{2}$ are the magnitude of the charges;
• $k_{e}$ is Coulomb's constant ($k_{e} = 8.988\times 10^{9}\ \text{N⋅m²⋅C⁻²}$); and
• $r$ is the distance between the point charges.

From this expression, we can define the electric field of a point charge at any point in space as the force per unit charge a positive test charge experiences in that position.

A test charge is simply a charge small enough not to affect the original charge's electric field.

That's why we can also call this tool a magnitude of electric force calculator.

🙋 You can start experimenting with our electric field calculator right away! Input the charge of the point charge and the distance at which you want to know its electric field's magnitude.

## Electric field equation

The relationship between Coulomb's law and the electric field is evident in the electric field equation:

$E = \frac{kQ}{r^{2}}$

where:

• $E$ is the magnitude of the electric field;
• $Q$ is the point charge;
• $r$ is the distance from the point charge.

If the charge is positive, the field it generates will be radially outward from it.

Otherwise, the field lines will point radially inward if the charge is negative.

If you also want to know how to calculate the electric field created by multiple charges, you will need to take the vector sum of the electric field of each charge.

Alternatively, our electric field calculator can do the work for you!

💡 Use this tool as an electric charge calculator too! Simply input the magnitude of the electric field at a known distance, and our calculator will obtain the charge that produced this field.

Luciano Mino
Electric field of a
single point charge
Charge
e
Distance
μm
Electric field
x10³
N/C
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