Question

A. Explain why the pie pans flew off the van de Graaf generator

b. Give a detailed explanation of why the rabbit fur and the plastic rod were attracted to each other after we rubbed them together but not before
c. Describe two things you could change to increase the force of electrical attraction between two objects (this is about Coluomb's Law).

Answer 1

Static energy is an energy between two charges.

Step-by-step explanation:

a). A van de Graff generator builds up a positive electric charge on the dome by separating the negative static electric charges from the positive static charge using a quickly moving belt. The positive charge collects on the large metal dome of the generator. When the charge builds up is large enough, a lighting like spark can shoot from the dome to a grounded discharge rod.

Like electric charges always repel each other, and oppositely electric charges will attract each other. When the aluminum pans are being charged by the van de Graff generator, then each of them attain the same positive polarity similar with the dome. Thus, positive charge starts to accumulate over the surface of each of the pie pan. Each aluminum pan repels the others. These repulsive forces between the pans are so strong that they succeed in overcoming the gravity force and thus the top of the pan is pushed away from the generator's dome.

b). Static electricity is produced by a concentration of negative and positive electric charges. Like charges pushes away each other while unlike charges pulls each other.

Objects generally have same numbers of positive charges as well as negative charges. And if there is any small imbalance in numbers of the charges on the object, it is charged.

Negative charges easily torn away from the materials like the fur or hair. Also, the negative charges are held on other materials like the plastics. If we rub a plastic rod with fur, the negative charges will get transferred from fur to rod. The rod gets negatively charged and the fur is positively charged. As a result, the rabbit fur and the plastic rod were attracted to each other.

c). Coulomb's law stated that :

`$F=(KQ_1Q_2)/(d^2)$` .............(i)

where,
`$Q_1$` and
`$Q_2$` are the charges of two objects d is the distance between two objects.

As from the above equation, we can say that force of electrical attraction between two objects depends on the charges and the distance between objects.

1. The electrical force between two charged object is inversely proportional to the distance of separation between two objects.

Decreasing separation distance (d) between the objects will increase its attraction force.

2. And, increasing the charges of two objects(+ve and -ve) increases the force of attraction between two objects.