- #1
nashed
- 58
- 5
Consider a parallel plate capacitor in vacuum, we hold a test charge below one plate and release it at some point in time, we observe that the charge is accelerating towards the other plate, that is the charge is gaining kinetic energy.
My question is how does the loss of energy from the capacitor affect them? (the energy is transferred to the charge thus it's no longer stored in the capacitor)
My initial assumption was that the charge distribution on the plates would change so that the electric field would lessen in magnitude and thus the total voltage goes down, but then after repeating the same process a large amount of times no matter how the chrages rearranged themselves inside the plates there is no way for the field to go down to zero, the chrages cannot escape from the capacitor as the plates are not connected in a circuit which leaves the option of the total capacitance going down but capacitance is a geometric property and since the geometry of the system hasen't changed the capacitance cannot go down.
Clearley then one or more of my assumptions is wrong, so how do we observe the effect of conservation of energy on the plates of the capacitor?
My question is how does the loss of energy from the capacitor affect them? (the energy is transferred to the charge thus it's no longer stored in the capacitor)
My initial assumption was that the charge distribution on the plates would change so that the electric field would lessen in magnitude and thus the total voltage goes down, but then after repeating the same process a large amount of times no matter how the chrages rearranged themselves inside the plates there is no way for the field to go down to zero, the chrages cannot escape from the capacitor as the plates are not connected in a circuit which leaves the option of the total capacitance going down but capacitance is a geometric property and since the geometry of the system hasen't changed the capacitance cannot go down.
Clearley then one or more of my assumptions is wrong, so how do we observe the effect of conservation of energy on the plates of the capacitor?