Paper 2, Section I, 6C\mathbf{6 C}

Electromagnetism | Part IB, 2017

State Gauss's Law in the context of electrostatics.

A spherically symmetric capacitor consists of two conductors in the form of concentric spherical shells of radii aa and bb, with b>ab>a. The inner sphere carries a charge QQ and the outer sphere carries a charge Q-Q. Determine the electric field E\mathbf{E} and the electrostatic potential ϕ\phi in the regions r<a,a<r<br<a, a<r<b and r>br>b. Show that the capacitance is

C=4πϵ0abbaC=\frac{4 \pi \epsilon_{0} a b}{b-a}

and calculate the electrostatic energy of the system in terms of QQ and CC.

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