Q.Deduce an expression for the capacitance of a parallel plate capacitor.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →By finding the uniform electric field between two oppositely charged parallel plates and integrating it to get the potential difference, the capacitance works out to .
Setup
Consider a parallel plate capacitor made of two large plane conducting plates, each of area , placed parallel to each other and separated by a small distance (so that is much smaller than the linear dimensions of the plates, allowing edge effects to be neglected). Let the plates carry equal and opposite charges and , so the surface charge density on each plate is .
Electric field between the plates
Each charged plate can be treated as an infinite plane sheet of charge, producing a uniform field of magnitude on each side, directed away from a positive sheet and towards a negative sheet. In the region between the plates, the fields due to the two sheets point in the same direction and add up, while outside the plates they cancel. Hence the field between the plates is
and this field is uniform throughout the space between the plates (away from the edges).
Potential difference
Since the field is uniform, the potential difference between the plates is simply
Capacitance
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