It was Ram's 18th birthday. Gaurav came wearing plastic gloves and holding a metal sphere. He told him "Happy birthday Ram, I want to gift you a question wrapped in our love for Physics. Can you figure out if this metal sphere is charged or not, without touching it? If yes, then is it positive or negative?"

Ram accepted the "gift" with a grateful note of "Dude! you are so full of crap!"

Being a curious guy, he started investigating immediately.
He took a new metal sphere, charged it positive and brought close to the first one. He noticed that they attract when close. He concluded that Gaurav's sphere must be negative!
Did Ram get it right?

Yes

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Solution

The correct option is B
No

Ram concluded by showing that the opposite charges attract. Quite smart of him but he forgot that the gifted sphere could have been neutral as well. Ram's new positively charged sphere would have attracted a neutral sphere as well. Hence attraction is not really a sure test. So to give a sure result we need to perform one more step. Bring a new negatively charged sphere near to the gifted sphere. If it still attracts- the sphere must have been neutral. If it repels, you very well know of what nature it should be?

NEGATIVE

From this we have learnt that repulsion is the sure test for confirming the presence of charge on two bodies.

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