Consider a system consisting of two oppositely charged spheres hanging by strings and separated by a distance r1, as shown in the accompanying illustration. Suppose they are separated to a larger distance r2, by moving them apart. (a) What change, if any, has occurred in the potential energy of the system?

Video transcript

Hi everyone for this problem, we're told to consider a system consisting of two spheres of identical charge and a frictionless plane separated by 10 cm. If the distance between the sphere is decreased, what happens to the potential energy of the system? Okay, so we want to know what happens to the potential energy and we're going to need our potential energy equation for this. And that is, potential energy is equal to K times Q, one times Q two over R. So for this problem, we're looking at two variables here, we're looking at our potential energy variable and we're looking at R which stands for distance. So we're told that we have two charges. So we'll just say that we have two positive charges And they're separated by a distance of 10 cm. So if this distance is decreased, we want to know what happens to the potential energy. So we see here we have an inverse relationship with these two variables. So if our if our distance is decreasing, that means our potential energy is going to increase. Okay, so that is the answer to this problem. It is that the electrostatic potential energy of the system increases as the separation between the like charged particles decreases. Alright, that's the end of this problem. I hope this was helpful