The field plays an intermediate role. Unfortunately the field concept is not yet in its full glory in electrostatics , where all charge distributions are at rest. We will see this from Maxwell's equations late in the semester. The bold-faced quantities above indicate vectors. The electric field is a vector field, since force is a vector quantity.
Vector fields are an extension of the field concept to vector quantities.
The effect of introducing the positive test charge q 0 must be minimized, therefore the limiting case is considered. The computer program EM Field from Academic Physics Software will permit us to examine the electric fields that result from groups of point charges. Also we examine some tranparencies of charge distributions where 8 lines emanate per unit of charge. Paper masks are used to focus our attention near to and far away from the charge distributions. If close together, the field is strong there, weaker where further apart.