Question

3) Two thin conducting wires are used to connect very large conducting plates to opposite poles of a battery. Chemical reactions within the battery produce an emf E that "pushes" one electr after another onto the wire connected to the negative terminal of the battery, and "pulls" one electron after another from the wire connected to the positive terminal of the battery on electrons pulled in electrons battery pashed out conducting plate a) Given that positive charges repel each other and negative charges also repel each other like charges repel"), speculate about how the similarly-charged particles that accumulate on each side of the battery arrange themselves on the (tiny) wires and (very large) plates. b) After the battery has worked for a while, there are a lot of extra electrons on the plate connected to the battery's negative terminal (we'll call this total electrical charge -q) and a lot of extra positive charge on the plate on the left (let's call this total electrical charge +q) How do these extra charges affect the battery's ability to push even more charge onto the plates? Will there come a time when the battery has pushed all the charge it can onto the plates? While the battery is charging up the plates, is there a current flowing in the wires? c) The capacitance C of a pair of conductors (like these two plates) is defined to be the ratio of the total charge 0 that is on the positive conducting plate (with -0 on the negative plate) and the voltage difference AV between the plates. That is, C Q/AV. Given your answers to the d) other parts of this question, why do you think this quantity is called the "capacitance"?

Answer 1