a cube and a charge !
Electricity and Magnetism
Level
1
What happens when a positive charge is brought near an isolated metal cube?
interior gets positively charged and the suurface gets negatively charged.
the cube gets positively charged.
the interior remains charge free and the surface gets non uniform charge distribution.
the cube gets negatively charged.
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
For the sake of convenience, since the cube is isolated we can consider it as solid & not hollow.
1.NON-UNIFORMITY OF INDUCED CHARGE:
Consider any point close to the cube where the charge is present. Now there are points on the surface of cube which are at different distances from the charge.The points close to the cube become negatively charged due to induction.Now there are some points which are far enough from point charge such that the electrostatic interaction between these points & the induced points are more as compared to the charge.Due to this the neighbouring points get opposite(in this case positive) charged.Again these charges induce some other points &so on.Hence the cube gets non-uniform charge on its surface in such a way that all kinds of equilibrium is maintained.
Note that the charges due to induction appear only on the surface of the metal & not in bulk. Therefore the internal of cube remains electrically neutral.