Question

If I have a positively charged surface and bring it near to a plasma, what would happen? Will both the electrons and protons behave in the same way? (compare their accelerations).

Answer 1

It is given that a positively charged surface is brought near to a plasma and we have to find out whether both the electrons and protons behave in the same way.To make it clear we have to be familiar with the features of plasma and its behaviour.Simply we can say that a plasma is an electrically charged gas.In a plasma some electrons have moved away from their atoms,so missing electrons are ions.They are called ions because there are more positively charged protons than negatively charged electrons.plasma is a state of matter in which an ionized gaseous substance becomes highly electrically conductive to the point that electric and magnetic fields dominate the behaviour of matter.

Plasma is an electrically neutral medium consists of positive and negative particles.when we introduce a positively charged surface near the plasma then the negetive particles in the plasma gets attracted to this surface and positively charged particles will move away.we know that in plasma positive charges in ions are acheived by removing electrons orbitting the atomic nuclei,where total number of electrons removed is related to either increasing temperature or density of other ionized matter.So we can see that there will be some transfer of charged particles when we introduce a positively charged surface near a plasma.