Room for PandaScientist and John Rennie

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5:49 AM

We are normally talking about conductors, and the potential is the same everywhere in a conductor. So if we have a conducting object in contact with a conducting rod then the potential is the same everywhere in the body and the rod - both on the surface and inside the objects.

5 hours later…

PandaScientist

11:02 AM

But say we've got two spheres of different radii and charges. Their potential won't be same right? We can't just take the average of charges and say it is the final charge per object , right?

@JohnRennie sir

John Rennie

11:18 AM

@PandaScientist If you connect two spheres of different sizes the potentials will be the same. I think I answered a question about this on the SE.

A: When two spheres of equal charge make contact, why does the larger sphere gain more charge?

As Martin Nicholson's answer describes, doing this properly is complicated. However if you are prepared to accept a rather arm waving and approximate argument we can easily see intuitively why the larger sphere carries more charge. We can calculate the potential at the surface of a charged sphere...