Question

Allright I recently finished some problems in gauss's law and I guess I can solve most of them. However, there are some problems I couldnot understand like-
If there is a uniformly charged sphere, are there any charges in the surface or not. I am thinking that the charges are distributed uniformly inside the sphere and not at the surface, am I right?
What is basically meant by conducting and non-conducting sphere? While calculating some problems I found out that the net charge inside the conducting sphere is zero. So, does it means that the charges reside only at the surface? Why?

Answer 1

When it's a conducting sphere, the charges all move towards the outside. When it's a nonconducting sphere, the charges stay where they have been put. This happens because all excess charges repel each other and will move as far away from each other as possible (i.e. - towards the outside of the sphere). If you have a specific example that you need some help with, feel free to post it, and I'll walk you through it.