1.

Firstly take a 14 gauge copper straight copper

wire.
2. Bend one end of copper wire into a shape like
U.
3. Turn the jar upside down onto the cardboard,
and trace a circle around the opening.
4. Cut out the circle and punch a small hole in its
center with a pencil.
5. Take a piece of aluminium foil and draw a small
leave structure with fat as penny lower end and
on the upper end make it thinner.
6. Now cut two of these and make a hole at the
top of both foils.
7. Take remaining aluminium foil and crumble and
scrumble it into a nice round shape to make the
collector.

8. Carefully push the wire through the hole, straight

end first.
9. Now add some insulative tape on the wire and
cardboard to stick them permanently.
10. Take the aluminium foil ball and carefully push onto
the top of the wire or instead of using aluminium foil
ball you can simply coil up the upper end of copper wire
to increase the surface area.
11. Take the two aluminium foil leaves and enter it to
the clips U bend part through the holes in the foil.
12. Finally take the cardboard containing aluminium
ball and leaves inserted to it through wire and put it on
the mouth of a plastic jar and tape it.
13. Rub the plastic comb or balloon against your hair or
clothing (wool works best), and hold either one close to
the aluminium foil ball.

Result:
If the air is dry enough, the ends of the aluminium strip
will fly apart when comb or balloon touches the
aluminium ball.

Explanation:
An electroscope shows the attraction and repulsion of
electrical charges. In all electrical activity, like charges
repel and opposite charges attract. When you rub the
comb, friction causes a positive charge to build up in
the plastic. When you hold the positively charged comb
near the aluminium foil ball, the comb attracts
negative charges which move up through the wire so
that only positive charges remain in the aluminium
strip. Since both ends of the strip now have the same
charge, the ends of the strip flay apart.

INTRODUCTION
The gold-leaf electroscope was developed in 1787 by
British clergyman and physicist Abraham Bennet. It
consists of a vertical metal rod, usually brass, from
the end of which hang two parallel strips of thin
flexible gold leaf. A disk or ball terminal is attached
to the top of the rod, where the charge to be tested is
applied. To protect the gold leaves from drafts of air
they are enclosed in a glass bottle, usually open at the
bottom and mounted over a conductive base. Often
there are grounded metal plates or foil strips in the
bottle flanking the gold leaves on either side. When
the metal terminal is touched with a charged object,
the gold leaves spread apart in a 'V'. This is because
some of the charge on the object is conducted through
the terminal and metal rod to the leaves. Since they
receive the same sign charge they repel each other and
thus diverge. If the terminal is grounded by touching
it with a finger, the charge is transferred through the
human body into the earth and the gold leaves close
together.

MATERIALS REQUIRED
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

SMALL PLASTIC or glass jar

ALUMINIUM FOIL
CARDBOARD
COPPER WIRE
TAPE
PENCIL
SCISSOR

8. PLASTIC COMB

USES OF GOLD LEAF ELECTROSCOPE

To detect a charge on a rod 'A' or 'B' bring the

rod near to the metallic disc or cap of the

electroscope.In either case the leaf diverges as
shown in the diagram

EXPLANATION
(a) shows what happens when a rod 'A' with a positive
charge is brought near the cap. Electrons are
attracted and get accumulated on 'C'. This leaves
positive charges on 'L' and 'M'. The repulsion caused
by the leaves diverges them. When the rod 'A' is taken
away the electrons get distributed and hence the
leaves close.
When a negatively charged rod 'B' is brought near the
cap [Figure (b)], the free electrons in the metal are
repelled. Thus all the electrons move away from the
cap to 'L' and 'M'. Since both the leaves have negative
charges they repel and diverge. The movement of
electrons from the cap gives it an equal amount of
positive charge.

 Charging by contact and conduction

Touch the cap 'C' of the electroscope with a rod 'A'
carrying a negative charge or with a rod 'B' carrying a
positive charge. In both cases the leaves diverge.

Explanation
Some of the charge on the rod is transferred by contact to
'C'. The charge spreads along the metal and the leaves will
get negatively charged and repel each other.

Identifying the charge

In order to identify the charge of a body we should
use a charged electroscope.

Electricity is produced when electrons move from one

place to other. In an atom there are three parts
proton, neutron, and electron. Proton is positive and
electron is negative .When something is rubbed then
the electrons of a thing transfers to the other thing
making that thing negatively charged. Now if it is
brought near a conductor like aluminium foil then the
charge conducts to that metal.So in this the charge
goes to the end at aluminium leaves making them
negatively charge.Like magnets opposite charges
attract each other and same charges repel each
other and here the aluminium leaves are same
charged and so they repel each other and thats how
it shows the existence of charge.

PHYSICS
PROJECT
NAME Ananya khan
CLASS XII
SEC A
ROLL NO 1
TOPIC FOIL LEAF
ELECTROSCOPE

BIBLIOGRAP
HY
I have collected the necessary
informations for completing this project
from some sites.
www.google.com
Wikipedia

These sites has helped me a lot in solving

the problems I faced while making the
model.

CONCLUSION
Electroscopes detect electric charge by the
motion of a test object due to the Coulomb
electrostatic force. Since the electric
potential or voltage of an object with
respect to ground equals its charge divided
by its capacitance to ground, an
electroscope can be regarded as a crude
voltmeter. However, the accumulation of
enough charge to detect with an
electroscope requires hundreds or
thousands of volts, so electroscopes are
only used with high-voltage sources such
as static electricity and electrostatic
machines. Electroscopes generally give
only a rough, qualitative indication of the

magnitude of the charge; an instrument

that measures charge quantitatively is
called an electrometer.