Profile
Settings
Refer your friends
Sign out
The electricity that powers your home television set or static electricity caused by a woollen sweater you are wearing all work on a similar principle i.e. potential of the charge it can carry. Thus, the study of electricity and electric currents must consist of the study of various materials and their respective properties. Various materials in physics are differentiated as conductors and non-conductors. What separates conductor materials from non-conductor materials is their potential to carry the charge. By studying the charge carrying capacity of metal, we can determine whether it is a conductor or not. Knowing the charge inside a conductor helps us calculate many things in the field of physics.
What is Charge?
Whenever you begin to study electric fields and currents, you must know the charge inside a conductor. For that, it is important to understand what a charge is. Take any metallic conductor into consideration for a moment; these metallic conductors have electrons that are loosely bound to the outer shell of the nucleus of the atom. When you apply an electric field to these metallic conductors, the electrons get detached from the atom and start moving freely inside the metal. This free movement of electrons inside a metallic conductor is called a charge. Charges inside a conductor always try to reach the surface.
How To Calculate Charge?
Calculating the charge inside a conductor helps in calculating electric charges inside a circuit. The calculating charge depends upon the nature of the electricity and on the principle of charge gets distributed throughout the object. However, it should be noted that these principles remain constant no matter what throughout the universe. Thus, we can call electric charge a fundamental property of physics. There are various ways through which we can calculate charges. But, using Coulomb’s Law is the most common formulae through which we calculate the charge.
Formulae through which we can calculate charge are:
FE = kq1.q2/ r²
Where,
q1 and q2 are two separate charges and r is the distance between them. FE is the electric force generated. In this equation, k is the universal constant and has a value of k= 9.0×109 Nm2 / C2.
We should not confuse charge with the potential inside a conductor. The charge is the flow of free electrons inside a conductor, whereas potential is the amount of work required for moving a charge from point a to point b. How to calculate potential inside a conductor we will see ahead.
Potential Inside A Conductor
We can understand the potential as the amount of work required to be done to move a charge from one point to another point against an electric field. Usually, the earth is used as a reference point in most studies. But we can use any point beyond the electric field as a reference point for our understanding and ease. Inside a conductor, the charge will always flow toward the surface of it.
What Is The Charge Inside A Conductor?
A charge is created by the movement of electrons inside a conductor. This movement is always towards the surface of the conductor. Thus, the charge inside a conductor is zero at all times. If charges are present inside a conductor, then an electric field would get created by such charges. This electric field will further cause the movement of electrons and therefore, a charge would get neutralised. Consequently, in order to maintain balance, charges are always required to be at the surface.
Conclusion
The charge is the free movement of electrons in a conductor towards its surface. We can calculate charge using Coulomb’s law FE = kq1q2/ r2, where FE is electric flow and k is the universal constant. The potential inside a conductor is the amount of work required to move a charge from a reference point to another reference point against a field of electricity. We also studied that the charge inside a conductor is always zero because the charge always moves toward the surface of the conductor and never inside the conductor. It is also necessary that the charge inside a conductor is zero.
