Induced Charge Resides On The Surface
Since the mobile charges in the interior of a metal object are free to move in any direction, there can never be a static concentration of charge inside the metal; if there was, it would attract opposite polarity charge to neutralize it. Therefore the mobile charges move under the influence of the external charge until they reach the surface of the metal and collect there, where they are constrained from moving by the boundary.
This establishes the important principle that electrostatic charges on conductive objects reside on the surface of the object. External electric fields induce surface charges on metal objects that exactly cancel the field within. Since the field is the gradient of the electrostatic potential, another way of saying this is that in electrostatics, the potential (voltage) throughout a conductive object is constant.
Read more about this topic: Electrostatic Induction
Famous quotes containing the words induced, charge, resides and/or surface:
“Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.”
—Abraham Lincoln (18091865)
“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
—Joseph Wood Krutch (18931970)
“the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.”
—Anne Sexton (19281974)
“All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitoryof the absolute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.”
—Charles Baudelaire (18211867)