Timeline for Does any object placed in an electric field change the electric field?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 16, 2014 at 14:05 | comment | added | Ruslan | @jinawee a hydrogen atom with non-zero $l$ doesn't have spherical symmetry. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 12:27 | comment | added | jinawee | Isn't the hydrogen atom supposed to have spherical symmetry, so it's totally neutral? | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 11:34 | comment | added | Wojciech Morawiec | Ok, I think we simply think differently of 'neutral' objects - for me, no object which has any kind of serparated charges (poinlike or distributed) can be called neutral without stating the distance one is looking at it from. So yes, a neutral hydrogen atom is not at all neutral if you are close enough to distinguish the proton from the electron - you will get a resulting dipole moment, however very, very tiny. Following this line, the el. field inside capacitor will be altered even by seemingly neutral objects, although this alteration is very small (this depends on the relative distance) | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 11:26 | comment | added | Rijul Gupta | No I do not mean that, I mean an object which has uniform distribution of charges and hence is neutral , even in casenof dielectric I mean to say if you insert uncharged dielectric in small portion then why the rest of the field is not altered as well as that within the dielectric. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 11:24 | comment | added | Wojciech Morawiec | @rijulgupta If by "neutral" object you mean an object composed of a positive and a negative charge that are spatially separated (so not a real neutral object), then the field inside the capacitor will be changed. This is exactly what happens when you insert a dielectric into a capacitor. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 11:13 | comment | added | Rijul Gupta | So do you agree that if you have a parallel plate capacitor with $E$ field set up inside, and you insert a neutral object in it, it would change the field from $E$ ? | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 11:01 | comment | added | Wojciech Morawiec | @rijulgupta But the object you introduced is not neutral at all - it consists of two distinct charges with opposite signs. At a large distance - and this is what you see from the first term of the multipole expansion, $\frac{Q}{r}$ - every electric potential looks like that of a point particle (with charge $Q$ equal to the sum of the charges of the constituents $q_i$), but if you come closer (so you can't disregard terms of order $r^{-3}$ anymore), you have to resolve the inner structure of the charge distribution. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 10:57 | comment | added | Rijul Gupta | You are saying " obviously the field of a single charge at the origin will be different from the field of three charges or any other configuration " But that is not what I am getting confused over. I am unable to comprehend how a neutral object can change an existing electric field. | |
| Jan 16, 2014 at 10:54 | history | answered | Wojciech Morawiec | CC BY-SA 3.0 |