Jackson 1.

1 Homework Problem Solution

Dr. Christopher S. Baird University of Massachusetts Lowell

PROBLEM:

q Use Gauss's theorem S En da = and Ed l =0 to prove the following:

0

a) Any excess charge placed on a conductor must lie entirely on its surface. (A conductor by definition contains charges capable of moving freely under the action of applied electric fields.) b) A closed, hollow conductor shields its interior from fields due to charges outside, but does not shield its exterior from fields due to charges placed inside it. c) The electric field at the surface of the conductor is normal to the surface and has a magnitude /0 , where is the charge density per unit area on the surface. SOLUTION: a) First, the problem contains the unstated assumption that what is wanted is the location of the charges in static equilibrium. This assumption is valid because this problem is found in the chapter on electrostatics. Static equilibrium (the lack of movement) can only exist when free charges are present if there are no electric fields. Therefore the electric field inside a conductor is zero. One can draw any arbitrary, closed surface completely inside the conductor and it will always have zero electric field at every point on the surface. The integral of the electric field over this surface is zero and by Gauss's law, the total charge is therefore zero. Because the surface is arbitrary, it can be chosen to be infinitesimally small or be chosen to go through any point in the conductor's interior. Therefore every point inside a conductor has zero charge, and all the charge must then reside on the surface. b) Assume for the moment that the electric field external to the conductor is perpendicular to the conductor's surface at the surface (the proof is left to part c). Because the conductor is hollow, the interior region of the conductor has by definition no free charges. If we choose a closed mathematical surface just inside and parallel to the inner surface of the hollow conductor, it therefore contains a total charge of zero. Gauss's Law then becomes:

S En da =0
Because the mathematical surface of the integral is parallel to the surface of the conductor, and the electric field is perpendicular to the surface of the conductor, the electric field must be parallel to the normal:

This simplifies Gauss's law to:

S E da =0
The magnitude of a vector, in this case E, is always positive. There is no way to get the integral of a permanently positive function to equal zero except if the function itself is zero at every point. Thus the electric field is zero at every point on the mathematical surface. The surface can be chosen to show that all points in the hollow region have zero electric fields. Another way of proving this is to consider a hollow conductor with no charges external to it. According to part a, there are no electric fields in the hollow region. Now bring charges in from infinity and place them just external to the conductor. Their electric fields can never penetrate the interior of the conductor according to part a, and thus can never reach the hollow region beyond the conducting shell. The fields in the hollow region remain zero. Note, this is true only for perfect conductors. In practice, if a conductor is thin enough and non-perfect enough, the fields actually do penetrate through a conducting shell. On the other hand, a charge inside the hollow region of a closed conductor induces a charge on the conductor that creates an external field. If the charge free region is now the infinite region external to the conductor, we can never draw a closed surface around infinity, and can thus never use Gauss's law to prove there is zero field. Another way of doing this is to draw a Gaussian integration surface outside and around the entire conductor. The surface now encloses the internal charges and by Gauss's law there must therefore be non-zero fields outside the conductor. c) Inside the conductor there are no electric fields. Outside the conductor, there are no free charges, and therefore there can be electric fields. What happens at the surface of the conductor? If there is a component of the electric field tangential to the conductor's surface, it would accelerate charges along the surface, and there would be no static equilibrium. There is therefore no tangential component, and electric fields are always normal to the conductor's surface. Draw a pillbox surface half-in and half-out of the surface of the conductor and let us integrate the electric field over the surface. There is no electric field tangential to the conductor's surface, thus the sides of the pillbox contributes nothing to the integral. Also, the electric field is zero inside the

conductor, thus the bottom of the pillbox contributes nothing to the integral. All that is left is the top of the pillbox. If the pillbox is small enough, the surface normal of its top and the electric field are parallel so that Gauss's law becomes:

top E da = 0
where q is the charge contained inside the pillbox. Now shrink the pillbox until it is infinitesimally small. The electric field is constant over an infinitesimally small surface and can be taken out of the integral, so that the integral is evaluated to just be the total area of the pillbox top: E Atop = q 0 E= q 1 A top 0

Rearranging:

Define as the charge per unit area q / Atop and the equation becomes: E= 0