Can anyone tell what is the direction of electric field on the surface of the conductor.....
Is it Radial or tangential????????????
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2 Answers
39At the surface of a charged conductor, electrostatic field must be normal to the surface at every point.
If the electric field is not normal to the surface, then it would have same non-zero component along the surface. The free charges on the surface would then experience a force and move. In a static situation, electrostatic field should not have tangential component, which in turn implies that the surface of a charged conductor must be normal to the surface at every point. If a conductor has no surface charge, then the field is zero.
49the point johny missed out is " the surface of a conductor is an equipotential surface in electrostatic conditions but flow of charge would disvalidate this and so there must be no tangential component of the field at the surface and so field is PURELY RADIAL."
it is precisely for this reason that field is radial or in better words normal to any point of an equipotential surface.
this can be used to explain field lines entering or leaving an equipotential surface NORMALLY!!!
cheers!!
