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Re: Current in a wire



On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Joel Rauber wrote:

My understanding is that that the claim that non-zero net charge only
resides on the surfaces is based on a Gauss' Law arguement that hinges
crucially on the idea that the E field is zero to the interior of a
conductor. The E field is of course manifestly *not* zero to the interior
of the conductor where we have non-zero current. Consequently I see no
fundamental reason why one can not have net charge as well as non-zero
current to the interior of a wire.

I'm not certain about this, but I think the problem is that net-charge
behaves self-repulsive, and therefore in a long wire it organizes itself
into a cylindrical shell, rather than being distributed within the copper.
Because the e-field along the wire is not zero, the charge distribution is
not zero. But if the e-field measured radially within the wire is zero,
then what distribution of charge can create such an e-field? A stack of
circles?


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