Answer to Question #88913 in Electricity and Magnetism for Shivam Nishad

Question

What is the basic difference in the nature of
the electric fields produced by static charges
and those induced by changing magnetic
fields ?

Answer 1

The only difference is in the structure of the fields:

• The field contribution from static charges are non-rotational (curl-free) but divergent.
• The field contributions from time-varying magnetic fields are divergence-less but have non-zero curl.

You can read this right out of the Gauss and Faraday's Laws in their differential form:

$$\text{div} \vec{E} = \nabla \cdot \vec{E} = \frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0}, \qquad \text{rot} \vec{E} = \nabla \times \vec{E} = - \frac{\partial \vec{B}}{\partial t}$$