As part of an honors project proposal, a student wanted to build a high voltage capacitor...
As part of an honors project proposal, a student wanted to build a high voltage capacitor by coating a five gallon paint bucket inside and out with aluminum foil. If the bucket were flattened, this would produce a dielectric-filled, parallel-plate capacitor with plate area of 0.9m2, plate separation of 1mm, and dielectric constant 2.3 (polyethylene). A homemade Van der Graaff generator will easily charge this capacitor to 75,000V. How much energy would it contain at this voltage?