Check Your Understanding
It has kinetic energy of at point and potential energy of which means that as Q approaches infinity, its kinetic energy totals three times the kinetic energy at since all of the potential energy gets converted to kinetic.
positive, negative, and these quantities are the same as the work you would need to do to bring the charges in from infinity
Given a fixed maximum electric field strength, the potential at which a strike occurs increases with increasing height above the ground. Hence, each electron will carry more energy. Determining if there is an effect on the total number of electrons lies in the future.
recall that the electric field inside a conductor is zero. Hence, any path from a point on the surface to any point in the interior will have an integrand of zero when calculating the change in potential, and thus the potential in the interior of the sphere is identical to that on the surface.
The x-axis the potential is zero, due to the equal and opposite charges the same distance from it. On the z-axis, we may superimpose the two potentials; we will find that for , again the potential goes to zero due to cancellation.
It will be zero, as at all points on the axis, there are equal and opposite charges equidistant from the point of interest. Note that this distribution will, in fact, have a dipole moment.
Conceptual Questions
The electric field strength is zero because electric potential differences are directly related to the field strength. If the potential difference is zero, then the field strength must also be zero.
Potential difference is more descriptive because it indicates that it is the difference between the electric potential of two points.
They are very similar, but potential difference is a feature of the system; when a charge is introduced to the system, it will have a potential energy which may be calculated by multiplying the magnitude of the charge by the potential difference.
An electron-volt is a volt multiplied by the charge of an electron. Volts measure potential difference, electron-volts are a unit of energy.
The region outside of the sphere will have a potential indistinguishable from a point charge; the interior of the sphere will have a different potential.
They both make use of static electricity to stick small particles to another surface. However, the precipitator has to charge a wide variety of particles, and is not designed to make sure they land in a particular place.
Problems
One possibility is to stay at constant radius and go along the arc from to , which will have zero potential due to the path being perpendicular to the electric field. Then integrate from a to b: The potential at point is higher than at since the field points radially outward, and this is consistent with a positive potential difference going from distance to a larger distance .
; a. Relative to origin, find the potential at each point and then calculate the difference.
;
b. To double the potential difference, move the point from 20 cm to infinity; the potential at 20 cm is halfway between zero and that at 10 cm.
a. increases; the constant (negative) electric field has this effect, the reference point only matters for magnitude; b. they are planes parallel to the sheet; c. 0.006 m/V
a. from the previous chapter, the electric field has magnitude in the region between the plates and zero outside; defining the negatively charged plate to be at the origin and zero potential, with the positively charged plate located at in the z-direction, so the potential is 0 for for for
b.
From previous results , note that b is a very convenient location to define the zero level of potential:
a. ;
The electric field is towards the surface of Earth. b. The coulomb force is much stronger than gravity.
We know from the Gauss’s law chapter that the electric field for an infinite line charge is , and from earlier in this chapter that the potential of a wire-cylinder system of this sort is by integration. We are not given , but we are given a fixed ; thus, we know that and hence . We may substitute this back in to find a. ; b. ; c.
The alpha particle approaches the gold nucleus until its original energy is converted to potential energy. , so
(Size of gold nucleus is about ).
Additional Problems
Recall from the previous chapter that the electric field is uniform throughout space, and that for uniform fields we have for the relation. Thus, we get for the distance between 25-V equipotentials.
a. Take the result from Example 7.13, divide both the numerator and the denominator by x, take the limit of that, and then apply a Taylor expansion to the resulting log to get: ; b. which is the result we expect, because at great distances, this should look like a point charge of
If the electric field is zero ¼ from the way of , then we know from
; the charge is 9 times larger than .
Challenge Problems
Answers will vary. This appears to be proprietary information, and ridiculously difficult to find. Speeds will be 20 m/s or less, and there are claims of grams for the mass of a drop.
Apply with to the potential calculated earlier, with and assume that the axis of the dipole is aligned with the z-axis of the coordinate system. Thus, the potential is .