ShmoopTube

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All right, well, here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by negativity, because sometimes all that [lady gives thumbs down]

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power of positivity stuff is really annoying. An electron is brought near a

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neutral sphere. Which of the following are true of the situation? Select two [questions and answers]

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answers. And here the potential ones...

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Just a reminder: these multiple selection questions will be popping up on the test, [student takes test]

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so make sure to know how many answers you're supposed to give. To answer this

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question, we need to remember that electrons have negative charges, like our [electron pictured]

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cousin who's always down on everything. But this sphere is like baby bear's porridge-- [negative cousin]

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not too positive, not too negative. Right in the middle just chilling, which means

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it's made up of positively charged particles and negatively charged [neutral sphere pictured]

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particles. It can't be made up of only neutrons--that just doesn't work. So what

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happens when this electron comes strolling on up? Well, it's only close to

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the sphere, it's not actually touching it, so the sphere's charge isn't going to [electron approaches sphere]

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change. That means answer A is one of our correct choices. But since the particles [A selected]

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within the sphere do have charges, well, they're going to react to this electron.

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The positive particles within the sphere will be down to party with Mr. Electron, [Mr. Electron is not for everyone]

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and the negative ones will want to get as far as possible from him. So

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they'll be shifted around in that sphere as best they can.

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That means the other correct answer is C, the sphere's internal charges will be [C selected]

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redistributed. Since the sphere's charge isn't going to change, options B and D

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are both incorrect. So just because the electron's a real downer, it doesn't [B and D are ruled out]

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mean the sphere is going to change its charge. Yeah, they'd have to actually

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be connected for that to happen, and speaking of which, maybe it's time we [sphere doesn't change its charge]

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deleted that cousin from our Instagram. It really bums us out.

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