A uniformly positively charged hemispherical shell occupies the upper half of a sphere. Consider any point P lying in the equatorial plane and inside the circular rim. The electric field at P due to the hemisphere is directed:
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Question

A uniformly positively charged hemispherical shell occupies the upper half of a sphere. Consider any point P lying in the equatorial plane and inside the circular rim. The electric field at P due to the hemisphere is directed:

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G1 Physics · Accepted Answer

Imagine adding an identical lower hemisphere to form a complete uniformly charged spherical shell. At any point inside the complete shell, E t o t a l E_total E t ​ o t a l = 0. At a point P in the equatorial plane, the lower hemisphere is the mirror image of the upper hemisphere. Their components parallel to the equatorial plane are equal, while their perpendicular components are opposite. For the total to be zero, each hemisphere's in-plane component must itself be zero. For a positively char…