Question

Two iron spheres contain excess charge, one positive and the other negative

1. Describe how the charges are arranged on these spheres if they are very far from each other.
O The charges will be separated and will move to opposite ends of the spheres creating poles.
O The positive charges in one sphere will be attracted to the negative charges in the other creating a charge separation.
O The charges will be uniformly distributed over the surface of each sphere.

Answer 1

3) The charges will be uniformly distributed over the surface of each sphere.

Step-by-step explanation:

If we are told that both spheres are very far from each other, this means that we can neglect the attractive force between them due to their charges. This is due to the inverse - square law that obeys the electrostatic force.

So, in each sphere, once introduced the excess charge, an electric field builds in such a way to be zero inside the conductor (assuming we can consider to iron as a conductor) so any excess charge (which ultimately produces the electric field) must go to the conductor surface.

Due to the sphere symmetry, this charge will distribute evenly throughout the surface, which will be true for both spheres.