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| 1. |
(a)Explain the meaning of the statement 'electric charge of a body is quantized ' (b) Why can one ignore quantisation of electric charge when dealing with macroscopic , i.e. large scale charges ? |
| Answer» Solution :(b)On the ONE hand, it is a fact that the net charge of a system is always INTEGRAL multiple of theelectronic charge, but on the other hand, we should also be aware that an electron is verysmall particle and its number in a macroscopic system is usually in billions or trillions, One Coulomb of charge is equivalent to `6.25 xx 10^18` electrons. When the charge in a system becomes significant, then it is not useful to think of the charge in terms of the electronic charge. In such cases we talk about continuousdistribution of charge. For continuous charge distribution, we use LINEAR charge DENSITY(`lambda`-charge per unit length), surface charge density (`density`-charge per unit surface area) and VOLUME charge density (`rho`-charge per unit volume). | |