Class 12 Physics - Chapter Electrostatic Potential and Capacitance NCERT Solutions | Explain what would happen if in the capa

A 600 pF capacitor is charged by a 200 V supply. It is then disconnected from the supply and is connected to another uncharged 600 pF capacitor. How much electrostatic energy is lost in the process?

A parallel plate capacitor with air between the plates has a capacitance of 8 pF (1pF = 10^-12 F). What will be the capacitance if the distance between the plates is reduced by half, and the space between them is filled with a substance of dielectric constant 6?

A regular hexagon of side 10 cm has a charge 5 µC at each of its vertices. Calculate the potential at the centre of the hexagon.

Three capacitors of capacitances 2 pF, 3 pF and 4 pF are connected in parallel.

(a) What is the total capacitance of the combination?

(b) Determine the charge on each capacitor if the combination is connected to a 100 V supply.

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 cube of side b has a charge q at each of its vertices. Determine the potential and electric field due to this charge array at the centre of the cube.

A 12 pF capacitor is connected to a 50V battery. How much electrostatic energy is stored in the capacitor?

Two tiny spheres carrying charges 1.5 μC and 2.5 μC are located 30 cm apart. Find the potential and electric field:

(a) at the mid-point of the line joining the two charges, and

(b) at a point 10 cm from this midpoint in a plane normal to the line and passing through the mid-point.

A spherical conducting shell of inner radius r1 and outer radius r2 has a charge Q.

(a) A charge q is placed at the centre of the shell. What is the surface charge density on the inner and outer surfaces of the shell?

(b) Is the electric field inside a cavity (with no charge) zero, even if the shell is not spherical, but has any irregular shape? Explain.

A charge of 8 mC is located at the origin. Calculate the work done in taking a small charge of -2 x 10^-9 C from a point P (0, 0, 3 cm) to a point Q (0, 4 cm, 0), via a point R (0, 6 cm, 9 cm).

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.

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?

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.

Show that the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation is equal to the de Broglie wavelength of its quantum (photon).

A plane electromagnetic wave travels in vacuum along z-direction. What can you say about the directions of its electric and magnetic field vectors? If the frequency of the wave is 30 MHz, what is its wavelength?

Calculate the

(a) momentum, and

(b) de Broglie wavelength of the electrons accelerated through a potential difference of 56 V.

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

The wavelength of light from the spectral emission line of sodium is 589 nm. Find the kinetic energy at which

(a) an electron, and

(b) a neutron, would have the same de Broglie wavelength.

Answer the following questions:

(a) In a single slit diffraction experiment, the width of the slit is made double the original width. How does this affect the size and intensity of the central diffraction band?

(b) In what way is diffraction from each slit related to the interference pattern in a double-slit experiment?

(c) When a tiny circular obstacle is placed in the path of light from a distant source, a bright spot is seen at the centre of the shadow of the obstacle. Explain why?

(d) Two students are separated by a 7 m partition wall in a room 10 m high. If both light and sound waves can bend around obstacles, how is it that the students are unable to see each other even though they can converse easily.

(e) Ray optics is based on the assumption that light travels in a straight line. Diffraction effects (observed when light propagates through small apertures/slits or around small obstacles) disprove this assumption. Yet the ray optics assumption is so commonly used in understanding location and several other properties of images in optical instruments. What is the justification?

An oil drop of 12 excess electrons is held stationary under a constant electric field of 2.55 x 10⁴ N C^-1 in Millikan's oil drop experiment. The density of the oil is 1.26 g cm^-3. Estimate the radius of the drop. (g = 9.81 m s^-2; e = 1.60 x 10^-19 C).

For sound waves, the Doppler formula for frequency shift differs slightly between the two situations:

(i) source at rest; observer moving, and

(ii) source moving; observer at rest.

The exact Doppler formulas for the case of light waves in vacuum are, however, strictly identical for these situations. Explain why this should be so. Would you expect the formulas to be strictly identical for the two situations in case of light travelling in a medium?

A magnetic field of 100 G (1 G = 10^-4 T) is required which is uniform in a region of linear dimension about 10 cm and area of cross-section about 10^-3 m². The maximum current-carrying capacity of a given coil of wire is 15 A and the number of turns per unit length that can be wound round a core is at most 1000 turns  m^-1. Suggest some appropriate design particulars of a solenoid for the required purpose. Assume the core is not ferromagnetic

Let us list some of the factors, which could possibly influence the speed of wave propagation:

(i) Nature of the source.

(ii) Direction of propagation.

(iii) Motion of the source and/or observer.

(iv) Wave length.

(v) Intensity of the wave.

On which of these factors, if any, does

(a) The speed of light in vacuum,

(b) The speed of light in a medium (say, glass or water), depend?