How to measure the charges stored in a capacitor when the plate space changes?

leo_ng
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1. Basically this was a question directed by my subject lecturer. He needs me to describe a method on how to measure the amount of charges stored versus the spacing between the plates of a capacitor.



2. There are many types of ways and equations to measure the amount of charges stored but I'am not sure how to do the same when dealing with different spacings between the plates of a capacitor.



3. Unfortunately, due to lack of research on this particular issue and lack of further knowledge, I haven't a clue on how to tackle the problem.
 
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If you know the charge in a plate, and you move that plate away or toward the other plate, the charge does not change. This is because charge is conserved, because charge is a measure of the number of charged particles that are present in the object.

EDIT: If you don't know the charge to begin with but you are suppose to figure it out from other given things, then there are some simple equations you can use. start here:

C= Q/V

E = \frac{1}{2} * C * V^2<br />
 
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Oh now I see it, all this while after some reading I was kinda wondering why wasn't the charge affected when voltage is supplied to the circuit. Thanks for the answer.
 
To solve this, I first used the units to work out that a= m* a/m, i.e. t=z/λ. This would allow you to determine the time duration within an interval section by section and then add this to the previous ones to obtain the age of the respective layer. However, this would require a constant thickness per year for each interval. However, since this is most likely not the case, my next consideration was that the age must be the integral of a 1/λ(z) function, which I cannot model.
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