Electrostatic energy of a uniformly charged solid sphere

ID: electrostatic-energy-of-a-uniformly-charged-solid-sphere

A solid sphere of radius and uniform charge density has total electric charge . Gauss law gives the radial electric field inside and outside. The electric potential vanishing at infinity is inside and outside. Integrating the electrostatic energy density over both regions gives . In a fixed-density family with and , the electrostatic energy scales as .

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