Conversation started Dec 2, 2019 at 16:55.
Dec 2, 2019 16:55
Suppose you have a charged capacitor that is not connected to a battery. The voltage between the plates of the capacitor is $V = Q/C$. Yes?
@JohnRennie yup
And because the capacitor is not connected to anything no charge can flow on or off the capacitor. That means $Q$ is constant.
So if $Q$ is constant that means the voltage is inversely proportional to the capacitance $V \propto 1/C$
So if you add a dielectric this will increase $C$ by a factor of $\epsilon_r$, so it must decrease $V$ by the same factor.
OK so far?
@JohnRennie ok
If you now connect the capacitor to a battery then the voltage $V$ is constant because the voltage is always just equal to the battery voltage. So now we have $Q = CV$, for constant $V$, and when you insert the dielectric it increases $C$ so $Q$ increases by the same factor of $\epsilon_r$.
@JohnRennie since V is constant so why E should be constant
Dec 2, 2019 17:02
@Jasmine $E = V/d$ and since both $V$ and $d$ are constant the field is also constant.
If Q is increasing so why wont electric field increase
@JohnRennie finding it bit confusing
It is true that the charge increases, but a dielectric is polarised in an electric field and the polarisation of the dielectric reduces the effective charge on the plates of the capacitor.
I can attempt to draw a diagram to show this if it will help ...
@JohnRennie yes please
@Jasmine OK, give me a moment ...
Okay :-)
Dec 2, 2019 17:09
Start with an isolated capacitor with no dielectric. If the charge is $Q$ the there's a potential difference $V=Q/C$ and a field $E = V/d$.
Now suppose we put a dielectric slab in between the plates. The field pulls electrons in the dielectric upwards, so the slab ends up with a negatvie charge on the upper surface and a positive charge on the lower surface.
So suppose you're in the middle of the slab. It now looks to you as if the top plate has a charge $Q-q$ and the bottom plate has a charge $-(Q-q)$. So it looks to you as if the charge on the capacitor has decreased.
Since the charge has decreased that means the potential has decreased and therefore the electric field has decreased.
 
Conversation ended Dec 2, 2019 at 17:14.