Charged Sphere and its own energy.

Find the self energy of a uniformly charged sphere of charge q 0 q_0 and radius R R .

Details and assumptions:

q 0 = 1 0 5 3 C q_0 = \frac{10^{-5}}{3} C

R = 0.01 m R = 0.01 m

1 4 π ϵ 0 = 9 × 1 0 9 S . I u n i t s \frac{1}{4\pi \epsilon_{0}} = 9 \times 10^{9} S . I units

Give your answer in Joules.

Try my set


The answer is 6.00.

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1 solution

Raj Magesh
Apr 25, 2015

Consider a sphere of radius x x and uniform charge density ρ \rho . Now, we want to add a small charged shell around this sphere, and calculate the change in potential energy when that happens.

d U = d W c , i = 1 4 π ϵ 0 4 π x 2 d x ρ 4 3 π x 3 ρ x dU = -dW_{c,i} = \dfrac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_{0}} \dfrac{4 \pi x^2 dx \rho \cdot \frac{4}{3}\pi x^3 \rho}{x}

0 U d U = 1 4 π ϵ 0 16 π 2 ρ 2 3 0 R x 4 d x \int_0^U dU = \dfrac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_{0}} \dfrac{16 \pi^2 \rho^2}{3}\int_0^R x^4 dx

And we know:

ρ = q 0 4 3 π R 3 \rho = \dfrac{q_{0}}{\frac{4}{3} \pi R^3}

U = 1 4 π ϵ 0 3 q 0 2 5 R \Longrightarrow U =\dfrac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_{0}} \dfrac{3 q_{0}^2}{5R}

Substituting the required values, we obtain 6 \boxed{6} Joules as the final answer.

BTW, Vishwak, you mis-typed the value of k in your details and assumptions. Nice question though!

Raj Magesh - 6 years, 1 month ago

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Yeah I overlooked that. Thanks.

Vishwak Srinivasan - 6 years, 1 month ago

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