Electrostatics, a specialized branch of physics, delves deeply into the intricacies of stationary or slow-moving electric charges that aren’t undergoing acceleration. It plays a crucial role in demystifying the underlying principles that govern the interaction between electric charges in various scenarios. One of the pivotal concepts introduced in this realm is relative permittivity. This can be understood as the ratio of a specific medium’s permittivity, a measure of its ability to store electrical potential energy, to the permittivity of free space, which acts as a standard reference.

Charges, the basic entities responsible for all electrostatic phenomena, aren’t all the same. They manifest in different distributions, namely line charges, which are linearly distributed; surface charges, which spread over a surface; and volume charges, which occupy a three-dimensional space. An electric field, which arises due to these charges, exerts force on other charges within its influence. To visualize these invisible fields, we use electric lines of force. The magnitude of these fields can be measured using units like Newton per Coulomb, giving scientists a quantitative grasp of the phenomenon.

Another intriguing entity in electrostatics is the electric dipole. Comprising two equal but opposite charges placed in close proximity, the term ‘dipole moment’ describes its strength or intensity. Diving deeper, one encounters other pivotal concepts like electric flux, which measures the flow of the electric field through a surface, and Gauss’s theorem, which relates the electric flux passing through a closed surface to the charge enclosed by that surface.