Abstract
A charged pendulum suspended in mechanical equilibrium by an insulated string and deflected by a uniform electric field was investigated theoretically and experimentally. When the uniform electric field is generated by a pair of large parallel conducting plates, there is an additional force of attraction between the pendulum and its corresponding image charges, which can dramatically affect the pendulum's equilibrium deflection. Consequently, the deflection depends non-linearly on the pendulum's net charge and the plate potentials, which results in additional unstable-equilibrium solutions, saddle-point solutions, or conditions for which no equilibrium occurs. Inclusion of this experiment within introductory and/or advanced undergraduate physics courses is discussed.
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