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Re: electrostatic shielding



this is the universally so called infinite sheet, right?

bc

P.s. A sphere is the easy method of obtaining an infinite sheet?

"Lemmerhirt, Fred" wrote:

I guess John Mallinckrodt's reminder of the uniqueness principle finally
provides a convincing requirement that the charge on the outside of the
sphere must remain uniformly distributed, provided that rearrangement of the
inner surface charge alone can cancel the off-center point charge's field
within the conducting shell. (As Bob Sciamanda pointed out, no one here
seems to have shown that this is possible, but it surely seems reasonable.)

Now can I extend this result to another situation?:

Suppose a very large isolated flat conducting sheet carries a net negative
charge. Will the charge be uniformly distributed on both surfaces,
producing a uniform field pointing straight toward the sheet on both sides?
And if a positive point charge is brought near one side of the sheet, will
the charge only on that side of the sheet be rearranged and the field on
that side "distorted", while the charge and field on the opposite side
remain uniform?

______________________________________
Fred Lemmerhirt
Waubonsee Community College
Sugar Grove, Illinois
flemmerhirt@mail.wcc.cc.il.us <mailto:flemmerhirt@mail.wcc.cc.il.us>
http://chat.wcc.cc.il.us/~flemmerh/physics.html
<http://chat.wcc.cc.il.us/~flemmerh/physics.html>