Consider this conductor
By Gauss' Law and using the properties of conductor , I can certainly say that a $-Q$ charge will occur at the inner surface of cavity and a $+Q$ charge will occur at the outer surface of conductor, Intuitively we can say that this happens because the point charge inside cavity attracts the free electrons of the bulk of conductor.
I have been taught that the distribution of these surface charges will be uniform but why is this the case? According to me it should be true only when the the point charge and cavity were located at the center of conductor.
Best Answer
Its not necessary that charge outside will have uniform distribution , its just in special cases like a spherical conductor or like a infinite cylindrical setup that the outer surface may have uniform charge distribution because these are the setups which have most symmtery from centre , otherwise any other conductor surface may not have same distance from the so called centre in your language . So in your case as the outside is a spherical conductor hence the charge distrubution outside surface will be uniform and the field will be such that of a point charge placed at centre of sphere .