Would a system consisting of two conducting spheres connected using a conducting slacked string placed in a uniform electric field become taut

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When a system like this is placed in a uniform horizontal electric field with an initially slacked string, will that string become taut due to the electric field's action? Or does those spheres comes close to each other.


Once the charge flows from one sphere to another to balance the electric field inside the system, two oppositely charged spheres are formed. Do these spheres attract each other or does the uniform charge distribution cause further separation? Or does the system remain in its initial state?

Best Answer

Start with the spheres separated by a displacement $d\hat{x}$ in an electric field $E\hat{x}$

If the spheres are very far apart, (compared to their radius), then before any charge moves, they will be separated by a voltage $V_0=Ed$. To compensate this, a charge $Q$ will flow from one sphere to the other, which changes their voltage by $Q/4\pi\epsilon_0R$ where $R$ is the sphere radius. So to make the voltages of both spheres equal, they have charges of: $$ Q=\pm4\pi\epsilon_0EdR/2 $$ Thus each sphere experiences a force from the electric field of $$\pm4\pi\epsilon_0E^2dR/2,$$ but they experience a force from one another of $$ \frac{1}{4\pi\epsilon_0}\frac{(4\pi\epsilon_0EdR/2)^2}{d^2} $$ Thus the force between the two spheres is smaller by a factor of $d/R$, which was defined to be big, and the spheres separate. They experience a much bigger force from the electric field separating them than from eachother.

It's certain that if they are separated initially by some distance greater than their radius, they are pulled apart. But obviously I have neglected to higher orders in approximation; one would need to do the following (in no particular order because some of these change order as you change parameters in the system):

  1. find the voltage perturbation on one sphere from the other
  2. find the dipole moment neccessary to cancel the external electric field within a single sphere
  3. find the dipole moment neccessary to cancel the electric field from the other sphere
  4. Find the charges on the string and how they effect the forces experienced by the balls

I suspect that none of these considerations, no matter what distance scale, will change the underlying conclusion that the spheres separate. This is because having the spheres as separate as possible minimizes potential energy in the form of $\int E^2dV$. These conductors are eliminating the presence of electric fields near themselves, and by spreading out as much as possible, they maximize the volume over which they are counteracting electric fields.

Kind of interesting then that in the presence of an external electric field, a conductor with some flexibility will try to expand as much as possible. I didn't know that before. Recall also my comment to the question - even if the spheres are perpendicular to the electric field, they both get dipole moments in the same direction, making them push eachother apart (and the $\int E^2dV$ argument also still applies).