Charged Disk

We will cover how to find the electric field of a uniformly charged disk, and how this can also apply to capacitors. (Shubham Shah)

The Main Idea

In this section, we will do a step-by-step process of calculating the electric field of a uniformly charged disk. This is especially important because two oppositely charged metal disks collectively are known as a capacitor, a concept seen in several places in physics and the real world.

A Mathematical Model

Before we begin our calculations, take a look at this image of a uniformly charged disk:

This image shows a visual representation of a disk. It should look pretty familiar. In fact, the shape of a disk is simply an extension of a ring. Think of it as infinitely many uniformly charged rings. Thinking of a disk this way will help to understand the equation of the electric field for a uniformly charged disk.

Recall the equation for the electric field of a uniformly charged ring:

[math]\displaystyle{ \ E= \frac{1}{4π\epsilon_0}\frac{qz}{(R^2+z^2)^(3/2)} }[/math]

A Computational Model

How do we visualize or predict using this topic. Consider embedding some vpython code here Teach hands-on with GlowScript

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