Chapter 6: Gauss’s Law II

Chapter Learning Objectives: After completing this chapter the student will be able to:
 Use Gauss’s Law to calculate the electric field in the vicinity of highly symmetric
solid or thin-walled three-dimensional objects.

You can watch the video associated

with this chapter at the following link:

Historical Perspective: In 1909, Robert Millikan performed an

very important experiment using oil drops suspended in between
the plates of a capacitor. Not only did Milliken’s Oil Drop
Experiment prove that electric charge is quantized, but he
calculated the charge on an electron to within 0.6% of the correct
value, 1.602 x 10-19 Coulombs. He received the 1923 Nobel Prize
in Physics for this experiment.

Photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Millikan%27s_setup_for_the_oil_drop_experiment.jpg, [Public

domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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 6.1 Solid Objects vs. Hollow Objects

Last chapter, we saw how to calculate the electric field in the vicinity of a highly symmetric
hollow three-dimensional object using Gauss’s Law. This was a substantial step forward when
compared to using Coulomb’s Law, which required much more extensive calculations just to
determine the electric field caused by approximately one-dimensional and approximately two-
dimensional objects.

Unfortunately, no objects in the real world are actually hollow. Sometimes objects have very
thin walls, but the walls always have a non-zero thickness to them. As we will see in chapter 7,
voltage is proportional to the derivative of the electric field, and since infinitely thin walls can
lead to discontinuities in electric field, this would also lead to infinite voltages. The universe
hates anything infinite, so any time you discover an infinite result, it is a good indication that you
have made a simplifying assumption that was overly simple.

Today, we will learn how to calculate the electric field in the vicinity of solid objects (or hollow
objects with a wall thickness greater than zero).

6.2 Solid Spherical Objects

When calculating electric fields for solid objects, it is important to first break the problem down
into all possible regions (such as finding the electric field inside a sphere (r<a) or outside the
sphere (r>a). For each of those regions, you will want to calculate two quantities: (1) The total
amount of electric charge enclosed within the Gaussian surface, and (2) the surface area of the
Gaussian surface. Once you have those two quantities, calculating the electric field is quite
simple, as we saw last time:

(Copy of Equation 5.9)

Notice that the surface area you need to calculate is always the surface area of the Gaussian
surface, not the surface area of any fixed feature of the problem geometry. Also, the amount of
charge enclosed within the Gaussian surface can now depend on the radius of the surface.

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 Example 6.1: Calculate the electric field in all regions r > 0 for a solid charged sphere with
uniform charge density, a total charge of Q, and a radius of a.

a
r

r<a

r>a

If Q=50 and a=2m, the following plot shows the electric field in all regions in the vicinity of the
sphere:

Figure 6.1. Electric field in the vicinity of a solid sphere of uniform charge density.

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Notice that the electric field in Figure 6.1 is continuous, even at the transition point where r=a.
Also notice that it is increasing as you move outward from the origin toward the surface of the
sphere, because the rate of increasing enclosed charge is greater than the rate of increasing
surface area of the Gaussian surface. Once you move outside the surface, there is no more
charge to enclose, and so the electric field begins to decrease according to 1/r2 as usual.

Example 6.2: Calculate the electric field in all regions r > 0 for a thin-walled sphere with
inner radius a, outer radius b, a uniform charge density, and a total charge of Q.

a
r b

r<a

a
r b

a<r<b

a
b

r>b

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If Q=50, a=1.5m, and b=2m, the following plot shows the electric field in all regions in the
vicinity of the sphere:

Figure 6.2. Electric field in the vicinity of a thin-walled sphere of uniform charge density.

Notice that the electric field is zero inside the sphere, then it increases with r inside the wall of
the sphere, and then it decreases as 1/r2 outside of the sphere. It is also worth noting that electric
field is once again continuous, and it reaches the same peak value at the outside edge of the
sphere as the previous example. In other words, if you are outside of the sphere, it doesn’t
matter whether it is solid or thin-walled—all that really matters is the total amount of charge on
the object, as long as it is symmetric.

6.3 Solid Cylindrical Objects

The very same strategy will apply when working with solid or thin-walled cylinders as we used
with spheres. We will break the problem into regions, calculate Qenc and A for each region, and
then calculate E. We should once again find that the electric field is continuous at the
transitions.

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 Example 6.3: Calculate the electric field in all regions  > 0 for a solid cylinder of radius a
with a uniform charge distribution and a linear charge density of L.

a


<a

>a

If L =50 and a=2m, Figure 6.3 shows the electric field in the vicinity of the cylinder:

Figure 6.3. Electric field in the vicinity of a solid cylinder of uniform charge density.

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Again, it is worth noting that the electric field increases with  inside the cylinder, and then it
decreases (this time with 1/) outside of the cylinder. This change is because the surface area of
the Gaussian cylinder increases more slowly than the surface area of the Gaussian sphere did.

Example 6.4: Calculate the electric field in all regions  > 0 for a thin-walled cylinder of
inner radius a, outer radius b, a uniform charge distribution, and a linear charge density of L.

a
 b

<a

a
 b

a<<b

a
b

>b

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If L =50 a=1.5m, and b=2m, Figure 6.4 shows the electric field in the vicinity of the thin-
walled cylinder:

Figure 6.4. Electric field in the vicinity of a thin-walled cylinder of uniform charge density.

We see one last time that the electric field is continuous, it increases with  inside the cylinder,
and then it decreases (this time with 1/) outside of the cylinder.

6.4 Summary

 To calculate the electric field in the vicinity of a solid or thin-walled highly symmetric
object:
1. Break the space down into regions according to the geometry of the problem.
2. Calculate the volume charge density of the shape being considered. This may also
require the calculation of the total charge and volume of the shape.
3. Calculate the charge enclosed inside the Gaussian surface. This may require a
calculation of the volume of the Gaussian surface that encloses the charge density
calculated in step 2. Portions of the Gaussian surface that do not enclose charge
density are not included in this calculation.
4. Calculate the electric field according to the simple form of Gauss’s Law:

 The electric field in the vicinity of any realistic three-dimensional object will always be
continuous. It will tend to increase inside regions of charge density, and it will tend to
decrease outside of regions of charge density.