Abstract
In the presently available literature, one finds distinct results for the electric field at the surface of a charged conducting sphere. In most textbooks, only a simple model is presented in which the electric field leaps from zero (inside the sphere) to a maximum value (just outside the sphere), as follows from Gauss’s law. For points exactly at the surface, the charge surrounded by the Gaussian surface becomes ambiguous, and this law is inconclusive. In this paper, by treating the spherical surface as a series of rings, it is shown that that field evaluates to half the discontinuity mentioned above, a result which agrees with more elaborate microscopic models.
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Fábio M S Lima is a Brazilian physicist who received his PhD from University of Brasilia in 2003. His research interests range from physics teaching and classical physics (laws of motion, nonlinear oscillations, buoyancy phenomenon, heat transfer and entropy, and electromagnetism) to more advanced topics such as Weber’s electrodynamics, relational mechanics, carriers in quantum heterostructures, and mathematical physics (Euler’s Gamma, Riemann’s zeta, and related functions).
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Lima, F.M.S. What Exactly is the Electric Field at the Surface of a Charged Conducting Sphere?. Reson 23, 1215–1223 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-018-0731-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-018-0731-y