Capacitance – Do Conductors Need Equal and Opposite Charge to Form a Capacitor?

capacitancechargeconductors

In my textbook, it is written that

In capacitor two conductors have equal but opposite charges.

Is this always true? Why does it have to be like this? I have seen a few problems in which the parallel plates of a capacitor were given opposite charges but not of equal magnitude, but then due to induction, the charge on the faces of the plates facing each other got equal and opposite charges and the opposite faces got equal charges, and then the teacher considered the combination as a capacitor because the sides facing each other were having equal and opposite charge. I am confused; is it right to do so? Why are we considering only one side of the plate?

Edit:
If we have not connected the plates by a wire or in other words, they are just placed in a dielectric medium, do we only consider the charges on the faces facing each other. I know capacitance does not depend upon the charge on the plates but still I wanted an intuition. Say one plate has a +2Q charge and other has -Q charge, then charges on the inside plates become $\frac{3Q}{2}$ and $-\frac{3Q}{2}$ respectively. and on the opposite faces there is +$\frac{Q}{2}$ charges. Say i want to write the potential difference between the two plates. $V=\frac{Q}{C}$ Now what charge do i write in Q? $\frac{3Q}{2}$ or something else? The teacher has taken the charges on the plates facing each other. But is there any reason to it?

Best Answer

By Gauss's theorem, we have (Let $S$ be an area of a capacitor):

charge $q$ creates an electric field $\lvert E \rvert = q/2\epsilon_0 S$ upside and downside.

I will use your example in Edit. Let me call a plate with $2Q$ plate A, and the other plate B. Let a charge in downside of plate A be $q_1$, and upside of B $q_2$. Hence chrge on upside of A is $2Q - q_1$, and downside of B is $-Q-q_2$.

Now, consider the point inside of plate A. There is $2Q- q_1$ above, and $q_1 + q_2 + (-q_2 - Q) = q_1 - Q$ below. Thus, electric field inside plate A is $(3Q- 2q_1)/\epsilon_0 S$. Since this must be $E = 0$ (by induction!), $q_1 = 1.5Q$.

By doing the same in plate B, we have $q_2 = -1.5Q$.

Finally, consider an electric field between plates. Since, upside of A and downside of B (namely, outside of capacitor) have same charge $Q/2$, they don't create electric field. Charges inside of capacitor (downside of A and upside of B) create electric filed $E= 1.5Q/\epsilon S$. (Hence we have $1.5Q = C \times Ed$)

In general cases, let charge on A be $Q_1$, and charge on B be $Q_2$. Then, a charge upside of A and downside of B (outside of a capacitor!) are both $(Q_1 + Q_2)/2$, so they don't create an electric field inside the capacitor. We only need to consider charges inside the capacitor (downside of A and upside of B), which are $\pm(Q_1-Q_2)/2$. In this case, $$ \frac{Q_1 - Q_2}{2} = CV . $$

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