Question

What happens when a charged glass rod (positive charge when rubbed with balloon) is first held near a neutral pith ball, and then touches the ball? Do the rod and the ball repel or attract each other after?

Answer 1

Dear Student ,

When a positively charged glass rod is held near a neutral pith ball, all the negative charge of the pith ball is attracted towards rod and all the positive charge moves away from the rod.

And now the ball has negative charge on the side closest to the rod and is attracted towards rod. And all positive charge moves to the side away from the rod. So, we can say that the rod induces the charge on the ball.

As the negative charge induces to the side closest to positively charged rod so they attract each other.

And as they touch some parts of the positive charge on rod nullifies the induced negative charge on ball so now both become positively charged. Once both become positively charged they tend to repel each other.

Hope it helps.

Thanks.