Electric Field and Potential Due to Conductor

Pawan and Ram were talking about conductor of electricity.

Pawan said electricity need a conductor to travel through.

When electricity travels, then the electric field is generated due to the charge.

Now, Ram asked how the electric field is related to the conductor of electricity.

Pawan said that electric field inside conductor is explained with the help of electrostatics of conductor.

The electric field and potential due to a conductor can be explained with the help of electrostatic concepts.

Let's understand the electric field and potential due to the conductor.

Conductors have loosely bound electrons which allow current to flow through them.

And in an external electric field, they drift against the direction of the field.

Under the static condition, the charge carriers are distributed evenly inside the conductor.

Due to which, there is no electric field inside the conductor.

The electrostatic field at the surface of a charged conductor is normal to the surface at every point.

For a non-normal electric field, there is a non-zero component along the normal.

Therefore, the electric field should have no tangential component in the static condition.

We can define the electric field at the surface of the conductor along with the unit normal vector as,

We can apply the Gauss law here, to find the value of the electric field in terms of $\sigma$.

The electric field inside a cavity in a conductor is always zero.

Whether the conductor is charged or charges are induced on a neutral conductor by an external field.

As all charges reside only on the outer surface of the conductor.

And hence, the cavity of any shape and size is always shielded from outer electric influence.

This is called electrostatic shielding.

When electricity flows through a conductor, then there are chances of electrical shocking.

Now, to prevent this shock of electricity, we can use the concept of earthing of a conductor.

Earthing is the process of connecting the conductive parts of an electrical installation to the ground.

A metallic part of an electrical installation that does not carry current is connected to an earth electrode or conductor.

And this conductor is buried in moist earth using a thick metal conductor of low resistance for safety.

Revision

Under the static condition, the charge carriers are distributed evenly.

The electrostatic field at the surface of a charged conductor is normal to the surface at every point.

A cavity in a conductor is always shielded from the outer electric field, because of electrostatic shielding.

Earthing of electrical conductors is done to prevent the unwanted shocking by the electric field.

The End