electric dipole

electric dipole, pair of equal and opposite electric charges the centres of which are not coincident. An atom in which the centre of the negative cloud of electrons has been shifted slightly away from the nucleus by an external electric field constitutes an induced electric dipole. When the external field is removed, the atom loses its dipolarity. A water molecule (H₂O), in which two hydrogen atoms stick out on one side and form together with the oxygen atom as vertex a 105° angle, constitutes a permanent electric dipole. The oxygen side of the molecule is always somewhat negative and the hydrogen side somewhat positive. An electric dipole may be large, too, such as a long straight wire used as a radio transmitting antenna on which electrons are impelled back and forth, making one end negative and the other positive with reversal of polarity every half cycle.

In an electric field a dipole undergoes a torque, tending to rotate so that its axis becomes aligned with the direction of the electric field. The amount of torque, greatest when the dipole is at right angles to the electric field, depends not only on the strength of the electric field but also on the separation of the two electric charges and their magnitude. If each charge has a magnitude q and the distance from the centre of the negative charge to that of the positive charge is d, the product qd is defined as the electric dipole moment. Its magnitude indicates the maximum torque exerted upon a given electric dipole per unit value of the surrounding electric field in a vacuum. The electric dipole moment, a vector, is directed along the line from negative charge toward positive charge. Dipole moments tend to point along the direction of the surrounding electric field.

Because electric dipole moment has dimensions of electric charge times displacement, its unit in the metre–kilogram–second system is the coulomb-metre; in the centimetre–gram–second system it is the esu-centimetre.