Class 12 Physics - Chapter Electric Charges and Field NCERT Solutions | The electrostatic force on a small spher

What is the force between two small charged spheres having charges of 2 x 10^-7 C and 3 x 10^-7 C placed 30 cm apart in air?

An infinite line charge produces a field of 9 × 10⁴ N/C at a distance of 2 cm. Calculate the linear charge density.

A polythene piece rubbed with wool is found to have a negative charge of 3 × 10⁻⁷ C.

(a) Estimate the number of electrons transferred (from which to which?)

(b) Is there a transfer of mass from wool to polythene?

A point charge +10 μC is a distance 5 cm directly above the centre of a square of side 10 cm, as shown in Fig. 1.34. What is the magnitude of the electric flux through the square? (Hint: Think of the square as one face of a cube with edge 10 cm.)

A conducting sphere of radius 10 cm has an unknown charge. If the electric field 20 cm from the centre of the sphere is 1.5 × 10³ N/C and points radially inward, what is the net charge on the sphere?

A point charge of 2.0 μC is at the centre of a cubic Gaussian surface 9.0 cm on edge. What is the net electric flux through the surface?

Two point charges q_A = 3 μC and q_B = −3 μC are located 20 cm apart in vacuum.

(a) What is the electric field at the midpoint O of the line AB joining the two charges?

(b) If a negative test charge of magnitude 1.5 × 10⁻⁹ C is placed at this point, what is the force experienced by the test charge?

An electric dipole with dipole moment 4 × 10⁻⁹ C m is aligned at 30° with the direction of a uniform electric field of magnitude 5 × 10⁴N C⁻¹. Calculate the magnitude of the torque acting on the dipole.

A uniformly charged conducting sphere of 2.4 m diameter has a surface charge density of 80.0 μC/m².

(a) Find the charge on the sphere.

(b) What is the total electric flux leaving the surface of the sphere?

Suppose the spheres A and B in Exercise 1.12 have identical sizes. A third sphere of the same size but uncharged is brought in contact with the first, then brought in contact with the second, and finally removed from both. What is the new force of repulsion between A and B?

Answer the following questions regarding earth's magnetism:

(a) A vector needs three quantities for its specification. Name the three independent quantities conventionally used to specify the earth's magnetic field.

(b) The angle of dip at a location in southern India is about 18º.

Would you expect a greater or smaller dip angle in Britain?

(c) If you made a map of magnetic field lines at Melbourne in Australia, would the lines seem to go into the ground or come out of the ground?

(d) In which direction would a compass free to move in the vertical plane point to, if located right on the geomagnetic north or south pole?

(e) The earth's field, it is claimed, roughly approximates the field due to a dipole of magnetic moment 8 x 1022 J T^-1 located at its centre. Check the order of magnitude of this number in some way.

(f ) Geologists claim that besides the main magnetic N-S poles, there are several local poles on the earth's surface oriented in different directions. How is such a thing possible at all?

(a) Two stable isotopes of lithium 6Li3 and7Li3 have respective abundances of 7.5% and 92.5%. These isotopes have masses 6.01512 u and 7.01600 u, respectively. Find the atomic mass of lithium.

(b) Boron has two stable isotopes, ¹⁰B₅ and ¹¹B₅ . Their respective masses are 10.01294 u and 11.00931 u, and the atomic mass of boron is 10.811 u. Find the abundances of  ¹⁰B₅ and ¹¹B₅.

A small candle, 2.5 cm in size is placed at 27 cm in front of a concave mirror of radius of curvature 36 cm. At what distance from the mirror should a screen be placed in order to obtain a sharp image? Describe the nature and size of the image. If the candle is moved closer to the mirror, how would the screen have to be moved?

Figure 8.6 shows a capacitor made of two circular plates each of radius 12 cm, and separated by 5.0 cm. The capacitor is being charged by an external source (not shown in the figure). The charging current is constant and equal to 0.15 A.

(a) Calculate the capacitance and the rate of charge of potential difference between the plates.

(b) Obtain the displacement current across the plates.

(c) Is Kirchhoff’s first rule (junction rule) valid at each plate of the capacitor? Explain.

Monochromatic light of wavelength 589 nm is incident from air on a water surface. What are the wavelength, frequency and speed of
(a) reflected, and
(b) refracted light? Refractive index of water is 1.33.

Two charges 5 x 10^-8 C and -3 x 10^-8 C are located 16 cm apart. At what point(s) on the line joining the two charges is the electric potential zero? Take the potential at infinity to be zero.

A long straight wire carries a current of 35 A. What is the magnitude of the field B at a point 20 cm from the wire?

A silver wire has a resistance of 2.1 Ω at 27.5 °C, and a resistance of 2.7 Ω at 100 °C. Determine the temperature coefficient of resistivity of silver.

(a) Alloys of metals usually have (greater/less) resistivity than that of their constituent metals.

(b) Alloys usually have much (lower/higher) temperature coefficients of resistance than pure metals.

(c) The resistivity of the alloy manganin is nearly independent of/increases rapidly with increase of temperature.

(d) The resistivity of a typical insulator (e.g., amber) is greater than that of a metal by a factor of the order of (10²²/10³).

Answer the following questions:
(a) The earths magnetic field varies from point to point in space. Does it also change with time? If so, on what time scale does it change appreciably?
(b) The earths core is known to contain iron. Yet geologists do not regard this as a source of the earths magnetism. Why?
(c) The charged currents in the outer conducting regions of the earths core are thought to be responsible for earths magnetism. What might be the battery (i.e., the source of energy) to sustain these currents?
(d) The earth may have even reversed the direction of its field several times during its history of 4 to 5 billion years. How can geologists know about the earths field in such distant past?
(e) The earths field departs from its dipole shape substantially at large distances (greater than about 30,000 km). What agencies may be responsible for this distortion?
(f ) Interstellar space has an extremely weak magnetic field of the order of 10−12 T. Can such a weak field be of any significant consequence? Explain.
[Note: Exercise 5.2 is meant mainly to arouse your curiosity. Answers to some questions above are tentative or unknown. Brief answers wherever possible are given at the end. For details, you should consult a good text on geomagnetism.]

A heating element using nichrome connected to a 230 V supply draws an initial current of 3.2 A which settles after a few seconds to a steady value of 2.8 A. What is the steady temperature of the heating element if the room temperature is 27.0 °C? Temperature coefficient of resistance of nichrome averaged over the temperature range involved is 1.70 x 10^-4 °C ^-1.

The radius of the innermost electron orbit of a hydrogen atom is 5.3 ×10 ⁻¹¹ m. What are the radii of the n = 2 and n =3 orbits?

A Rowland ring of mean radius 15 cm has 3500 turns of wire wound on a ferromagnetic core of relative permeability 800. What is the magnetic field B in the core for a magnetising current of 1.2 A?

In accordance with the Bohr’s model, find the quantum number that characterises the earth’s revolution around the sun in an orbit of radius 1.5 × 10¹¹ m with orbital speed 3 × 10⁴ m/s. (Mass of earth = 6.0 × 10²⁴ kg.)

A p-n photodiode is fabricated from a semiconductor with band gap of 2.8 eV. Can it detect a wavelength of 6000 nm?

Answer the following questions:

(a) Explain qualitatively on the basis of domain picture the irreversibility in the magnetisation curve of a ferromagnet.

(b) The hysteresis loop of a soft iron piece has a much smaller area than that of a carbon steel piece. If the material is to go through repeated cycles of magnetisation, which piece will dissipate greater heat energy?

(c) 'A system displaying a hysteresis loop such as a ferromagnet, is a device for storing memory?' Explain the meaning of this statement.

(d) What kind of ferromagnetic material is used for coating magnetic tapes in a cassette player, or for building 'memory stores' in a modern computer?

(e) A certain region of space is to be shielded from magnetic fields.

Suggest a method.