What happens to the electric field if the charge is tripled while keeping the distance constant?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
What happens to the electric field if the charge is tripled while keeping the distance constant?
It triples
It halves
It remains the same
It quadruples
The electric field is directly proportional to the charge. Tripling the charge will triple the electric field.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: What happens to the electric field if the charge is tripled while keeping the distance constant?
Solution: The electric field is directly proportional to the charge. Tripling the charge will triple the electric field.
Steps: 6
Step 1: Understand that the electric field (E) is created by a charge (Q).
Step 2: Know that the formula for the electric field due to a point charge is E = k * Q / r^2, where k is a constant and r is the distance from the charge.
Step 3: Recognize that if we keep the distance (r) constant and only change the charge (Q), the electric field depends only on the charge.
Step 4: If the charge is tripled (Q becomes 3Q), we can substitute this into the formula: E = k * (3Q) / r^2.
Step 5: This shows that the new electric field (E') is E' = 3 * (k * Q / r^2), which means the electric field is now three times larger.
Step 6: Conclude that tripling the charge while keeping the distance constant will triple the electric field.
