8.5 Exercise 22

Earth can be considered as a spherical capacitor with two plates, where the negative plate is the surface of Earth and the positive plate is the bottom of the ionosphere, which is located at an altitude of approximately 70 km. The potential difference between Earth’s surface and the ionosphere is about 350,000 V. (a) Calculate the capacitance of this system. (b) Find the total charge on this capacitor. (c) Find the energy stored in this system.