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Re: (Mea Culpa), Thoughts on series Capacitors



David is absolutely correct, and boy do I feel embarrased about my comment
#1. I hope it doesn't detract from the other comments. And is also a good
lesson, in making hasty comments without a little thought. I realized my
mistake before I even finished the first line of his response, I confused
thinking about the interior region with the region of space exterior to the
capacitors. OUCH!

Joel




Joel Rauber mentioned:
...
1) First a minor comment. I disagree with a statement David made. He
wrote: "If the charges on plates B and C of the interior plates were not
-Q
and +Q respectively then there would be an electric field in the region
between the capacitors . . ."

If we look at an ideal case where the two capacitors are well approximated
by two infinite parallel plate capacitors far apart and connected by a very

thin wire. We can model the static charge distribution as 4 sheets of
charge and the field in between the two plates is zero, even if the
interior charges are +- 1.1 Q.

No. If plate A has a +Q charge uniformly distributed on it, plate B has a
-1.1*Q charge uniformly distributed on it, plate C has a + 1.1*C uniformly
distributed on it, and plate D has a - Q charge uniformly distributed over
it, then capacitor AB has a net -0.1*Q charge on it while capacitor CD has a
net +0.1 *Q charge on it . . . . .