Class 12 Physics - Chapter Electric Charges and Field NCERT Solutions | Careful measurement of the electric fiel

What is the force between two small charged spheres having charges of 2 x 10^-7 C and 3 x 10^-7 C placed 30 cm apart in air?

An infinite line charge produces a field of 9 × 10⁴ N/C at a distance of 2 cm. Calculate the linear charge density.

A polythene piece rubbed with wool is found to have a negative charge of 3 × 10⁻⁷ C.

(a) Estimate the number of electrons transferred (from which to which?)

(b) Is there a transfer of mass from wool to polythene?

A point charge +10 μC is a distance 5 cm directly above the centre of a square of side 10 cm, as shown in Fig. 1.34. What is the magnitude of the electric flux through the square? (Hint: Think of the square as one face of a cube with edge 10 cm.)

A conducting sphere of radius 10 cm has an unknown charge. If the electric field 20 cm from the centre of the sphere is 1.5 × 10³ N/C and points radially inward, what is the net charge on the sphere?

A point charge of 2.0 μC is at the centre of a cubic Gaussian surface 9.0 cm on edge. What is the net electric flux through the surface?

The electrostatic force on a small sphere of charge 0.4 μC due to another small sphere of charge − 0.8 μC in air is 0.2 N.

(a) What is the distance between the two spheres?

(b) What is the force on the second sphere due to the first?

Two point charges q_A = 3 μC and q_B = −3 μC are located 20 cm apart in vacuum.

(a) What is the electric field at the midpoint O of the line AB joining the two charges?

(b) If a negative test charge of magnitude 1.5 × 10⁻⁹ C is placed at this point, what is the force experienced by the test charge?

An electric dipole with dipole moment 4 × 10⁻⁹ C m is aligned at 30° with the direction of a uniform electric field of magnitude 5 × 10⁴N C⁻¹. Calculate the magnitude of the torque acting on the dipole.

A uniformly charged conducting sphere of 2.4 m diameter has a surface charge density of 80.0 μC/m².

(a) Find the charge on the sphere.

(b) What is the total electric flux leaving the surface of the sphere?

Answer the following questions regarding earth's magnetism:

(a) A vector needs three quantities for its specification. Name the three independent quantities conventionally used to specify the earth's magnetic field.

(b) The angle of dip at a location in southern India is about 18º.

Would you expect a greater or smaller dip angle in Britain?

(c) If you made a map of magnetic field lines at Melbourne in Australia, would the lines seem to go into the ground or come out of the ground?

(d) In which direction would a compass free to move in the vertical plane point to, if located right on the geomagnetic north or south pole?

(e) The earth's field, it is claimed, roughly approximates the field due to a dipole of magnetic moment 8 x 1022 J T^-1 located at its centre. Check the order of magnitude of this number in some way.

(f ) Geologists claim that besides the main magnetic N-S poles, there are several local poles on the earth's surface oriented in different directions. How is such a thing possible at all?

(a) Two stable isotopes of lithium 6Li3 and7Li3 have respective abundances of 7.5% and 92.5%. These isotopes have masses 6.01512 u and 7.01600 u, respectively. Find the atomic mass of lithium.

(b) Boron has two stable isotopes, ¹⁰B₅ and ¹¹B₅ . Their respective masses are 10.01294 u and 11.00931 u, and the atomic mass of boron is 10.811 u. Find the abundances of  ¹⁰B₅ and ¹¹B₅.

A small candle, 2.5 cm in size is placed at 27 cm in front of a concave mirror of radius of curvature 36 cm. At what distance from the mirror should a screen be placed in order to obtain a sharp image? Describe the nature and size of the image. If the candle is moved closer to the mirror, how would the screen have to be moved?

Figure 8.6 shows a capacitor made of two circular plates each of radius 12 cm, and separated by 5.0 cm. The capacitor is being charged by an external source (not shown in the figure). The charging current is constant and equal to 0.15 A.

(a) Calculate the capacitance and the rate of charge of potential difference between the plates.

(b) Obtain the displacement current across the plates.

(c) Is Kirchhoff’s first rule (junction rule) valid at each plate of the capacitor? Explain.

Monochromatic light of wavelength 589 nm is incident from air on a water surface. What are the wavelength, frequency and speed of
(a) reflected, and
(b) refracted light? Refractive index of water is 1.33.

Two charges 5 x 10^-8 C and -3 x 10^-8 C are located 16 cm apart. At what point(s) on the line joining the two charges is the electric potential zero? Take the potential at infinity to be zero.

A bar magnet of magnetic moment 1.5 J T^-1 lies aligned with the direction of a uniform magnetic field of 0.22 T.

(a) What is the amount of work required by an external torque to turn the magnet so as to align its magnetic moment: (i) normal to the field direction, (ii) opposite to the field direction?

(b) What is the torque on the magnet in cases (i) and (ii)?

(a) Three resistors 1 Ω, 2 Ω, and 3 Ω are combined in series. What is the total resistance of the combination?

(b) If the combination is connected to a battery of emf 12 V and negligible internal resistance, obtain the potential drop across each resistor.

 (a) Three resistors 2 Ω, 4 Ω and 5 Ω are combined in parallel. What is the total resistance of the combination?

(b) If the combination is connected to a battery of emf 20 V and negligible internal resistance, determine the current through each resistor, and the total current drawn from the battery.

A silver wire has a resistance of 2.1 Ω at 27.5 °C, and a resistance of 2.7 Ω at 100 °C. Determine the temperature coefficient of resistivity of silver.

A battery of emf 10 V and internal resistance 3 Ω is connected to a resistor. If the current in the circuit is 0.5 A, what is the resistance of the resistor? What is the terminal voltage of the battery when the circuit is closed?

A storage battery of emf 8.0 V and internal resistance 0.5 Ω is being charged by a 120 V dc supply using a series resistor of 15.5 Ω. What is the terminal voltage of the battery during charging? What is the purpose of having a series resistor in the charging circuit?

In a potentiometer arrangement, a cell of emf 1.25 V gives a balance point at 35.0 cm length of the wire. If the cell is replaced by another cell and the balance point shifts to 63.0 cm, what is the emf of the second cell?

Answer the following questions:

(a) In a single slit diffraction experiment, the width of the slit is made double the original width. How does this affect the size and intensity of the central diffraction band?

(b) In what way is diffraction from each slit related to the interference pattern in a double-slit experiment?

(c) When a tiny circular obstacle is placed in the path of light from a distant source, a bright spot is seen at the centre of the shadow of the obstacle. Explain why?

(d) Two students are separated by a 7 m partition wall in a room 10 m high. If both light and sound waves can bend around obstacles, how is it that the students are unable to see each other even though they can converse easily.

(e) Ray optics is based on the assumption that light travels in a straight line. Diffraction effects (observed when light propagates through small apertures/slits or around small obstacles) disprove this assumption. Yet the ray optics assumption is so commonly used in understanding location and several other properties of images in optical instruments. What is the justification?

A short bar magnet has a magnetic moment of 0.48 J T^-1. Give the direction and magnitude of the magnetic field produced by the magnet at a distance of 10 cm from the centre of the magnet on (a) the axis, (b) the equatorial lines (normal bisector) of the magnet.

 Answer carefully:

(a) Two large conducting spheres carrying charges Q₁ and Q₂ are brought close to each other. Is the magnitude of electrostatic force between them exactly given by Q₁Q₂/4π∈₀r², where r is the distance between their centres?

(b) If Coulomb's law involved 1/r³ dependence (instead of 1/r²), would Gauss's law be still true?

(c) A small test charge is released at rest at a point in an electrostatic field configuration. Will it travel along the field line passing through that point?

(d) What is the work done by the field of a nucleus in a complete circular orbit of the electron? What if the orbit is elliptical?

(e) We know that electric field is discontinuous across the surface of a charged conductor. Is electric potential also discontinuous there?

(f) What meaning would you give to the capacitance of a single conductor?

(g) Guess a possible reason why water has a much greater dielectric constant (= 80) than say, mica (= 6).