Final answer:
A honeybee can accumulate a static electric charge of 17 pc as it flies, a phenomenon related to electrostatics and charge quantization in Physics. These charges influence their interactions with flowers during pollination and are analogous to the electrical phenomena experienced by charged objects in a magnetic field.
Step-by-step explanation:
When a honeybee flies, it accumulates a static electric charge measured in picocoulombs (pc), which in the given question is 17 pc. Charge quantization tells us that charge comes in multiples of the electron's charge, which is approximately −1.6 × 10⁻¹⁹ C, indicating that a bee's charge is a multiple of this fundamental unit. In Physics, these small charges are significant because they can lead to electrostatic interactions with other charged objects, including flowers when bees are pollinating. This phenomenon relates to fundamental forces like the electrostatic force and concepts such as charge conservation observed in nuclear processes where the emission of a particle with a negative charge from a nucleus results in an increase of positive charge by one unit in the remaining nucleus.
The ability of a honeybee to carry an electric charge is a fascinating aspect of their biology, which also has implications in Physics since it influences pollination, as found in Figure 26.21. Furthermore, the movement of charged particles, such as a honeybee in flight, is analogous to the forces experienced by an aircraft with a charged wingspan flying in a magnetic field, as stated in problem 22.6 about the Hall effect, which is a physical phenomenon where a voltage difference is created across an electrical conductor, transverse to an electric current in the conductor and a magnetic field perpendicular to the current.