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charged insulators



On Friday, July 3, I asked:
. . . "If an insulator allows so littleflow of charges, how can an
insulator end up as uniformly charged (as we use in examples in
electrostatics)?
Does it mean that we can achieve uniformly-distributed charges in
an insulator only after a very long time?"
Pls. enlighten me.

Thank you to Bob and William for the information on the mechanisms for
producing a charged surface. How about uniform volume charge distributions
(e.g., a uniformly charged insulating sphere used in Gauss' Law
illustrations)? As Ludwik pointed out, the volume charge distribution is a
useful concept, e.g. the atomic nucleus. Is the insulator w/ uniform
volume charge distribution used in electrostatics therefore only
illustrative of this important concept, (since we cannot use a conductor
which have charges on the surface only) but it is actually very hard to
produce such uniform volume charge distribution in an insulator?

Darwin Z. Palima
University of the Philippines
Diliman, Quezon City |
PHILIPPINES \|/
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