Direction of Magnetic Field
This page is here to provide an explanation for finding the direction of magnetic field. Since magnetic field is a cross product, finding its direction can be confusing at times, and you'll be asked many questions involving the direction of the magnetic field due to a moving charge, a current carrying wire, a current carrying coil, a bar magnet, etc. Hopefully this should work as a resource to come to when confused about anything regarding direction of magnetic fields!
The Main Idea
You previously learned about electric fields, and how a charged particle, or group of charged particles create a field in a specific pattern due to those particles' orientations. Magnetic field works in a similar fashion, but remember that it doesn't come from simply a charged particle, but a moving charged particle, with a velocity v. Due to this new concept, we start to see some new patterns that you should want to get very familiar with.
A Mathematical Model
Recall that the equation for magnetic field due to a moving charged particle is [math]\displaystyle{ \vec{B} =\frac{\mu_0}{4\pi} \frac{(q\vec{v} \times \hat{r})}{|\vec{r}|^2} }[/math], otherwise known as the good-ole Biot-Savart law. The most important thing to note about this in regards to direction of magnetic field is that this is a cross product between the charge of the moving particle times its velocity, [math]\displaystyle{ q\vec{v} }[/math] and the unit distance vector from the particle to the observation location, [math]\displaystyle{ \hat{r} }[/math].
A Computational Model
How do we visualize or predict using this topic. Consider embedding some vpython code here Teach hands-on with GlowScript
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