In an electrostatic situation, are all charges really at rest?

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SUMMARY

In electrostatic situations, all charges are indeed at rest, which results in a zero electric field within a conducting material. This principle is grounded in the behavior of excess charges introduced to a neutral system. If any electric field (E) were present, it would cause these excess charges to move, contradicting the definition of electrostatics. Therefore, a perfect conductor will always have free charges that redistribute themselves to eliminate any internal electric field.

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SpartanG345
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Hi

My textbook mentions

"We know that in an electrostatic situation (with all charges at rest) the electric
field at every point in the interior of a conducting material is zero. If E were
not zero, the excess charges would move"

Can this actually be true since charges can still be moving around at constant speeds...
When they say 'all charges' do they mean excess charges you have introduced to the neutral system?
 
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SpartanG345 said:
Hi

My textbook mentions

"We know that in an electrostatic situation (with all charges at rest) the electric
field at every point in the interior of a conducting material is zero. If E were
not zero, the excess charges would move"

Can this actually be true since charges can still be moving around at constant speeds...
When they say 'all charges' do they mean excess charges you have introduced to the neutral system?

If the charges were moving at constant speeds, it wouldn't be an electrostatic situation.

Since a perfect conductor has the property that there are an unlimited number of completely free charges, any electric field inside the conductor would force the free charges to move around until eventually there was no field (and no force on them since F=qE).
 

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