Let’s imagine that you have an idea for an experiment to fly on NASA’s “Vomit Comet.” (What’s special about this plane? It flies in parabolic paths (aka freefall) which result in near weightlessness. This means that you can ignore the effects of gravity when plan your experiment.) You want to mimic the orbital motion of the planets but by using electrostatic force rather than gravitational. And, instead of a planet, you will be orbiting a droplet of water that is 0.5mm in radius and has an deficit of 1.5 x 106 electrons. The droplet is to orbit around a small (1cm radius) sphere. If you want the droplet to move with an orbital radius of 14cm and period of one minute, what should the charge be on the central sphere? BTW The density of water is 997 kg/m3.

Let’s imagine that you have an idea for an experiment to fly on NASA’s “Vomit Comet.” (What’s special about this plane? It flies in parabolic paths (aka freefall) which result in near weightlessness. This means that you can ignore the effects of gravity when plan your experiment.) You want to mimic the orbital motion of the planets but by using electrostatic force rather than gravitational. And, instead of a planet, you will be orbiting a droplet of water that is 0.5mm in radius and has an deficit of 1.5 x 106 electrons. The droplet is to orbit around a small (1cm radius) sphere. If you want the droplet to move with an orbital radius of 14cm and period of one minute, what should the charge be on the central sphere? BTW The density of water is 997 kg/m3.