Final answer:
In electrostatics, when a spherical object like a basketball is uniformly charged, the charge can be spread evenly across the surface (metallic sphere) or throughout its volume (insulating sphere), demonstrating a concept known as spherical symmetry.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question pertains to the study of electrostatics and specifically the behavior of electric charge distributions with spherical symmetry. When a basketball or any spherical object is uniformly charged, the charge can be distributed either on the surface (conducting sphere) or throughout the volume (insulating sphere).
Uniformly charged sphere is the concept being discussed, which has direct applications in understanding electric fields and potentials around spherical charge distributions.
For a conducting sphere, excess charge resides on the surface due to the repulsion between like charges. Thus, option b (the charge is spread evenly across the surface of the basketball) is correct for a metallic sphere, and the electric field outside can be calculated as if all the charge were located at the center.
For an insulating sphere, the charge distribution may be uniform throughout the volume, so option c (the charge is only on the inside of the basketball) can also be correct, and the charge distribution would still maintain spherical symmetry.