Charge on Conducting balls#

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Five identical neutral conducting balls hanging from strings are numbered 1 to 5. As shown in the Figure above. Balls 1 and 2 touch as they are brought near a highly charged metal sphere and then are separated, with ball 1 closer to the sphere. Ball 3 contacts both the metal sphere and ball 4. Ball 4 is pulled away from ball 3, and then ball 3 is pulled away from the metal sphere.

Part 1#

Following these charging steps, what is the sign of the charge on ball 1?

Answer Section#

  • negative

  • positive

  • Zero

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Part 2#

Following these charging steps, what is the sign of the charge on ball 3?

Answer Section#

  • Negative

  • Positive

  • Zero

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Part 3#

Following these charging steps, ball 1 is attracted to (choose the best answer):

Answer Section#

  • Ball 2 only

  • Ball 5 only

  • None of the balls

  • All of the other balls (2, 3, 4 and 5)

  • Balls 2, 3 and 4 only

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Attribution#

Problem is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
The Creative Commons 4.0 license requiring attribution-BY, non-commercial-NC, and share-alike-SA license.