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walleye
Oct30-09, 11:24 PM
So just to verify (i'm not sure about this):

The electric field inside a conductor is zero?

the electric field inside an insulator is not necessarily zero?

am i right so far?

MaxwellsDemon
Oct30-09, 11:32 PM
Yeah, the reason is because a conductor allows all the charge to accumulate on the surface and distribute itself in a way so that the charges are able to "move as far away from each other as possible"...this causes the electric field inside to cancel via Gauss' Law. In the insulator, charge can be spread throughout the body so the electric field is dependent on the charge density and its distribution inside the object.