⚡ Acceleration in an Electric Field Calculator
Calculate a charged particle’s acceleration in a uniform electric field.
Charged Particle Acceleration in an Electric Field
A charged particle in a uniform electric field experiences a force F = qE, where q is the particle’s charge and E is the electric field strength. By Newton’s second law, this produces an acceleration a = F/m = qE/m, where m is the particle’s mass.
The default values in this calculator use the charge and mass of an electron, showing how even a modest field can produce enormous acceleration on very light charged particles — this is the basic principle behind electron guns, particle accelerators, and CRT displays. Note that at very high resulting speeds approaching a significant fraction of light speed, relativistic corrections to mass become important and this simple non-relativistic formula becomes less accurate.