For the arrangement of plates depicted in the figure, the capacitance between adjacent plates is 50 nF . When a charge of 1.0 C is placed on the upper plate, what will be the potential difference between the upper plate and the middle plate?

Step-by-step solution

Let the three parallel plates be denoted as 1 (upper), 2 (middle), and 3 (lower). The total charges on the isolated plates are given as: Q₁ = 1.0 C Q₂ = 0 Q₃ = 0 For a system of parallel conducting plates, the charge appearing on the outermost surfaces is equal and is given by half the sum of the total charges on all plates: q_ out = Q₁ + Q₂ + Q₃ 2 = 1.0 C + 0 + 0 2 = 0.5 C The charge on the upper surface of plate 1 is q_ 1a = 0.5 C . The charge on the lower surface of plate 1 is q_ 1b = Q₁ - q_ 1a = 1.0 C - 0.5 C