Electric field inside a void in a conductor?

Hassan2

Hi everyone,

The field inside a conductor and also inside any voids in a said to be zero. I'm convinced with the available proofs for the field inside a conductor. However, I am not aware of any solid proof for the field inside a void in a conductor. Would you please share your knowledge on this topic?

Thanks.

kmarinas86

There's no such thing as an unconditionally perfect conductor. The zero field assumption is only approximate. It will be even more suspect when science furthers develops nanotechnology, rendering these approximations as a quaint symbol of the time when people didn't need to care about it.

cragar

If I have a spherical shell with plus q charge on it, the E field is zero inside because there is no enclosed charge so it is zero by Gauss's Law.
no perfect conductors, what about superconductors?

Hassan2

That's based on the symmetry of the shell. For an arbitrary geometry we need another approach.