Hey physis buffs-strength of magnetic force on a wire?

Question

i have no idea how to solve this..and it's in my physics 101 class which apparently i will fail if i can't get my head around this stuff. can someone help me solve this and/or at least explain it in lamen terms?

A straight wire of length 0.68 m carrying current 1.18 A is placed transversely to a magnetic field of strength 1.63 T. Determine the strength of the magnetic force on the wire.

Answer 1

Yep, that's the formula. However, that formula is in the form of a cross product (it's vector "multiplication"). If you just want to get the magnitude (and not direction) of the force you can use the form of the equation F=iLBsin0 (where that 0 is a theta).

In that form the i is current, the L is the length of the wire and the B is the magnetic field. Theta is the angle between the direction of current and the direction of the field. Since they are transverse to each other theta is 90 degrees so sin0 is 1.

Therefore you just simply fill in the values to F=i*L*B

Answer 2

mabey not