Thursday, August 28, 2014

electrostatics - Does the induced charge on a conductor stay at the surface?


My textbook says that when a conductor is placed in an electric field, the electrons in it realign so that the net electric field inside the conductor is zero. There isn't a proof for this. It merely states that the electrons drift opposite to the applied electric field and create an opposite electric field inside the conductor canceling the external one.


I imagine Gauss's Law would provide a simple proof. If we try enclose a point inside the conductor in a gaussian surface, and note that the enclosed charge is zero, so the flux through the surface is zero and so is the electric field at the surface.


When I looked back at my reasoning, I realized that I had assumed that the charges induced on the conductor always stay at the surface, which I had no way of proving. How do I prove this formally?





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