What will the electric potential energy be if one of the charges is completely removed and replaced by a nega?
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at
5:09 am
The electric potential energy for two positive charges of magnitude q and separated by a distance r is U1. What will the electric potential energy be if one of the charges is completely removed and replaced by a negative charge of the same magnitude?
Filed under: Home Wind Turbines
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
It will be -U1.
Potential energy is U = kQq/r
Where r is the distance between them, Q and q are the charges and k is a constant ( = 1 / (4 * pi * E0) …. E0 is the permittivity of free space)
In the equation all you’re doing is replacing Q with -Q, which just flips the sign once you multiply and you’re left with -U1.
Ask your question in homework help.