In a Van de Graaff type generator a spherical metal shell is to be a 15 x 106 V electrode. The dielectric strength of the gas surrounding the electrode is 5 x 107 Vm-1. What is the minimum radius of the spherical shell required? (You will learn from this exercise why one cannot build an electrostatic generator using a very small shell which requires a small charge to acquire a high potential.)
Potential difference, V = 15 x 106 V
Dielectric strength of the surrounding gas = 5 x 107 V/m
Electric field intensity, E = Dielectric strength = 5 x 107 V/m
Minimum radius of the spherical shell required for the purpose is given by,
Hence, the minimum radius of the spherical shell required is 30 cm.
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.
Monochromatic light of wavelength 632.8 nm is produced by a helium-neon laser. The power emitted is 9.42 mW.
(a) Find the energy and momentum of each photon in the light beam,
(b) How many photons per second, on the average, arrive at a target irradiated by this beam? (Assume the beam to have uniform cross-section which is less than the target area), and
(c) How fast does a hydrogen atom have to travel in order to have the same momentum as that of the photon?
What is the shortest wavelength present in the Paschen series of spectral lines?
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).
Which among the curves shown in Fig. 1.35 cannot possibly represent electrostatic field lines?
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
Answer the following questions:
(a) When a low flying aircraft passes overhead, we sometimes notice a slight shaking of the picture on our TV screen. Suggest a possible explanation.
(b) As you have learnt in the text, the principle of linear superposition of wave displacement is basic to understanding intensity distributions in diffraction and interference patterns. What is the justification of this principle?
Two large, thin metal plates are parallel and close to each other. On their inner faces, the plates have surface charge densities of opposite signs and of magnitude 17.0 × 10−22 C/m2. What is E:
(a) in the outer region of the first plate,
(b) in the outer region of the second plate, and
(c) between the plates?
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
(a) In a metre bridge [Fig. 3.27], the balance point is found to be at 39.5 cm from the end A, when the resistor Y is of 12.5 Ω. Determine the resistance of X. Why are the connections between resistors in a Wheatstone or meter bridge made of thick copper strips?
(b) Determine the balance point of the bridge above if X and Y are interchanged.
(c) What happens if the galvanometer and cell are interchanged at the balance point of the bridge? Would the galvanometer show any current?
A short bar magnet placed with its axis at 30º with a uniform externalmagnetic field of 0.25 T experiences a torque of magnitude equal to 4.5 x 10-2J. What is the magnitude of magnetic moment of the magnet?