Materials Science & Engineering

A dielectric is an electrical insulator which will be polarized by an applied field . When a dielectric is placed in an electrical field, electric charges don't flow through the material as they're doing in an electrical conductor but only slightly shift from their average equilibrium positions causing dielectric polarization. Because of dielectric polarization, positive charges are displaced within the direction of the sphere and negative charges shift within the other way . This creates an indoor electric field that reduces the general field within the dielectric itself. If a dielectric consists of weakly bonded molecules, those molecules not only become polarized, but also reorient in order that their symmetry axes align to the sector .