ok, so ive been reading about coulombs, joules, volts, electric potential and all that buisness in my physics textbook, and i have a question if im understanding it correctly, i read that a baloon can potentially have 5000 volts, if i understand it, its becuase each electron has alot of repulsion force, and there are very few electrons so it can be charged to 5000 volts, now im pretty sure i dont understand it, so can someone explain it to me, also, what happens when you step up a voltage using coils and magnents (like what happens besides the fact that the voltage increases)
-
Some of this may seem elementary but bear with me, I think it might make a bit more sense if you read it progressively.
About the Coulomb: The repulsion between two electrons is ONLY dependent on the distance between each molecule. The charge (that is, coulombs) is constant, it never changes from electron to electron. That means that one can determine the number of electrons present by just knowing the coulombs of charge they are dealing with. It's represented by C (which can't be broken into anything else).
About the Joule: The joule represents the amount of energy whatever you are measuring has (in this case the energy inside the balloon). It's represented by J (which can be broken into Nm or kg x m^2 / s^2).
About the Volt: The volt is (as your textbook puts it) a "measure of electrical potential". But what is electrical potential? It's unit is called the volt (V), but a voltage can be broken into Joules/Coulombs. Simply put, it is a measure of the potential energy of a given amount of ELECTRONS (since they all have a constant charge).
Now to apply these to your problem, we just need to consider what a gas is like. It is a very widely dispersed state of matter (which means there aren't a whole lot of molecules in the balloon). Now since there are not a lot of atoms (and hence electrons) in the balloon, you can increase the energy of each electron (voltage) a great deal without significantly increasing the energy withing the balloon. Since voltage is a measure of the potential energy of a number of electrons, if there are only a few electrons you can have them be very energetic without having to have ALOT of energy put into the balloon.
About the Coulomb: The repulsion between two electrons is ONLY dependent on the distance between each molecule. The charge (that is, coulombs) is constant, it never changes from electron to electron. That means that one can determine the number of electrons present by just knowing the coulombs of charge they are dealing with. It's represented by C (which can't be broken into anything else).
About the Joule: The joule represents the amount of energy whatever you are measuring has (in this case the energy inside the balloon). It's represented by J (which can be broken into Nm or kg x m^2 / s^2).
About the Volt: The volt is (as your textbook puts it) a "measure of electrical potential". But what is electrical potential? It's unit is called the volt (V), but a voltage can be broken into Joules/Coulombs. Simply put, it is a measure of the potential energy of a given amount of ELECTRONS (since they all have a constant charge).
Now to apply these to your problem, we just need to consider what a gas is like. It is a very widely dispersed state of matter (which means there aren't a whole lot of molecules in the balloon). Now since there are not a lot of atoms (and hence electrons) in the balloon, you can increase the energy of each electron (voltage) a great deal without significantly increasing the energy withing the balloon. Since voltage is a measure of the potential energy of a number of electrons, if there are only a few electrons you can have them be very energetic without having to have ALOT of energy put into the balloon.