A Uniformly Charged Sphere
Question
Use Gauss's Law to find the electric field everywhere due to a
uniformly charged insulator shell, like the one shown below. The shell
has a total charge Q, which is uniformly distributed throughout its
volume.
A spherical cavity of radius a is surrounded by a shell of
conducting material with inner radius a and outer radius
b. (See figure below.) A point charge +Q is located at the center of the
cavity. The conductor carries a total charge -2Q.
(a) What is the charge on the inner surface of the conductor?
(b) What is the charge on the outer surface of the conductor?
(c) Use Gauss's Law to find the electric field for radius r
< a.
(d) Use Gauss's Law to find the electric field for radius a < r
< b.
(e) Use Gauss's Law to find the electric field for radius r > b.
Once you have finished here, go on to learn about using Gauss's Law to
find various electric fields.
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