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).
(a) The force between two conducting spheres is not exactly given by the expression, Q1Q2/4π∈0r2, because there is a non-uniform charge distribution on the spheres.
(b) Gauss's law will not be true, if Coulomb's law involved 1/r3 dependence, instead of1/r2, on r.
(c) Yes,
If a small test charge is released at rest at a point in an electrostatic field configuration, then it will travel along the field lines passing through the point, only if the field lines are straight. This is because the field lines give the direction of acceleration and not of velocity.
(d) Whenever the electron completes an orbit, either circular or elliptical, the work done by the field of a nucleus is zero.
(e) No
Electric field is discontinuous across the surface of a charged conductor. However, electric potential is continuous.
(f) The capacitance of a single conductor is considered as a parallel plate capacitor with one of its two plates at infinity.
(g) Water has an unsymmetrical space as compared to mica. Since it has a permanent dipole moment, it has a greater dielectric constant than mica.
A 600 pF capacitor is charged by a 200 V supply. It is then disconnected from the supply and is connected to another uncharged 600 pF capacitor. How much electrostatic energy is lost in the process?
A parallel plate capacitor with air between the plates has a capacitance of 8 pF (1pF = 10-12 F). What will be the capacitance if the distance between the plates is reduced by half, and the space between them is filled with a substance of dielectric constant 6?
A regular hexagon of side 10 cm has a charge 5 µC at each of its vertices. Calculate the potential at the centre of the hexagon.
Three capacitors of capacitances 2 pF, 3 pF and 4 pF are connected in parallel.
(a) What is the total capacitance of the combination?
(b) Determine the charge on each capacitor if the combination is connected to a 100 V supply.
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 cube of side b has a charge q at each of its vertices. Determine the potential and electric field due to this charge array at the centre of the cube.
A 12 pF capacitor is connected to a 50V battery. How much electrostatic energy is stored in the capacitor?
Two tiny spheres carrying charges 1.5 μC and 2.5 μC are located 30 cm apart. Find the potential and electric field:
(a) at the mid-point of the line joining the two charges, and
(b) at a point 10 cm from this midpoint in a plane normal to the line and passing through the mid-point.
A spherical conducting shell of inner radius r1 and outer radius r2 has a charge Q.
(a) A charge q is placed at the centre of the shell. What is the surface charge density on the inner and outer surfaces of the shell?
(b) Is the electric field inside a cavity (with no charge) zero, even if the shell is not spherical, but has any irregular shape? Explain.
A charge of 8 mC is located at the origin. Calculate the work done in taking a small charge of -2 x 10-9 C from a point P (0, 0, 3 cm) to a point Q (0, 4 cm, 0), via a point R (0, 6 cm, 9 cm).
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.
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?
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.
A negligibly small current is passed through a wire of length 15 m and uniform cross-section 6.0 x 10-7 m2, and its resistance is measured to be 5.0 Ω. What is the resistivity of the material at the temperature of the experiment?
A modulating signal is a square wave, as shown in Fig. 15.14.
The carrier wave is given by
(i) Sketch the amplitude modulated waveform
(ii) What is the modulation index?
Figure shows a potentiometer circuit for comparison of two resistances. The balance point with a standard resistor R = 10.0 Ω is found to be 58.3 cm, while that with the unknown resistance X is 68.5 cm. Determine the value of X. What might you do if you failed to find a balance point with the given cell of emf Ω µ?
A hydrogen atom initially in the ground level absorbs a photon, which excites it to the n = 4 level. Determine the wavelength and frequency of the photon.
A galvanometer coil has a resistance of 12 Ω and the metre shows full scale deflection for a current of 3 mA. How will you convert the metre into a voltmeter of range 0 to 18 V?
An electron emitted by a heated cathode and accelerated through a potential difference of 2.0 kV, enters a region with uniform magnetic field of 0.15 T. Determine the trajectory of the electron if the field (a) is transverse to its initial velocity, (b) makes an angle of 30º with the initial velocity.
Two concentric circular coils X and Y of radii 16 cm and 10 cm, respectively, lie in the same vertical plane containing the north to south direction. Coil X has 20 turns and carries a current of 16 A; coil Y has 25 turns and carries a current of 18 A. The sense of the current in X is anticlockwise, and clockwise in Y, for an observer looking at the coils facing west. Give the magnitude and direction of the net magnetic field due to the coils at their centre.
In a chamber, a uniform magnetic field of 6.5 G (1 G = 10-4 T) is maintained. An electron is shot into the field with a speed of 4.8 x 106 m s-1 normal to the field. Explain why the path of the electron is a circle. Determine the radius of the circular orbit. (e = 1.6 x 10-19 C, me= 9.1 x 10-31 kg)
Figure shows tracks of three charged particles in a uniform electrostatic field. Give the signs of the three charges. Which particle has the highest charge to mass ratio?