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Faraday cage - The idealized Faraday cage

Faraday cage - The idealized Faraday cage: Encyclopedia II - Faraday cage - The idealized Faraday cage

Consider an idealized hollow electrical conductor such as an empty sphere or box. If the outside of the cage is an idealized conductor, it will form an equipotential surface, that is to say, its surface will have the same electrical potential at every point. If there is no electrical charge inside the box, then by Gauss' law and the divergence theorem, there should be no electrostatic field inside the equipotential surface, regardless of what the field is outside the box. Since the electrostatic field equations are linear, even field-generating charges in ...

Faraday cage: Encyclopedia II - Faraday cage - The idealized Faraday cage

Faraday cage - The idealized Faraday cage

Consider an idealized hollow electrical conductor such as an empty sphere or box.

If the outside of the cage is an idealized conductor, it will form an equipotential surface, that is to say, its surface will have the same electrical potential at every point. If there is no electrical charge inside the box, then by Gauss' law and the divergence theorem, there should be no electrostatic field inside the equipotential surface, regardless of what the field is outside the box.

Since the electrostatic field equations are linear, even field-generating charges in the box will not be affected by any fields outside the box.

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1836, Belgian, Benjamin Franklin, Electromagnetic shielding, Francesco Beccaria, Gauss' law, Gauss's law, Grounding, Maxwell's equations, Michael Faraday, RF shielding, Skin effect, TEMPEST, Turin, United States, charge carriers, conductor, divergence theorem, electric fields, electrical charge, electrical potential, electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic pulse, electroscope, electrostatic discharges, electrostatic shielding, equipotential surface, lightning, microwave oven, national security, rebar

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The idealized Faraday cage", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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