Question

A spherical shell made of plastic, contains a charge Q distributed uniformly over its surface. What is the electric field inside the shell? If the shell is hammered to deshape it, without altering the charge, will the field inside be changed? What happens if the shell is made of a metal?

Answer 1

Explanation:

• The shell is non-conducting because it is made up of plastic. The sum of all the vectors of the electric field at the center is zero because of the type of distribution.
• It is to be observed that the charge is uniformly distributed over the shell surface. If the shell is a metal (a special case), there would not be any field inside the reshaped body.
• This is due to the reason that the metal surface’s charge redistributed themselves in such a kind of the point, which has the same potential.
• So, there won’t be any field lines within the conductor. The field inside the deformed conductor would always be zero.