Charging by electrostatic induction in a new way. Will it work? Instead of connection to Earth I am connecting to another conductor

Question

1. I am adding the figure of a conventional setup for electrostatic induction.
2. The drawn setup on paper is the special setup.
3. If you don't want to read whole description then just read the summary.

Conventional:

Special:

We know the conventional way of charging by electrostatic induction, by placing the conductor sphere-1 (I am using sphere so we can distinguishing identity of this conductor in question) near the charged object and connecting the conductor to Earth and then finally removing the Earth connection and then removing the charged object, so by this we get a charged conductor (sphere-1.)

The new setup is the as same as above except this time I am not connecting the conductor (sphere-1) to Earth, rather I am connecting a wire from conductor (sphere-1) to another conductor (sphere-2.) Sphere-2 is not under the influence of the charged object, and keeping all the other things same.

• Will charging by electrostatic induction occur in this special setup?
• Will sphere-1 have some charge after removing the charged object and the connection from sphere-2?

Summary

In the conventional setup for electrostatic induction, if we change the setup a little bit by removing the Earth connection and instead of that we connect it to another conductor (which is not under influence of charged object,) then will charging by electrostatic induction occur here? Will sphere-1 have some charge after removing the charged object and the connection from sphere-2??

Answer 1

So, at the moment you connect the wire you have the following.

But clearly that is not stable. The second sphere initially sees that it's connected to some negative charges, so charge will flow until all the electrostatic forces balance.

Some of the negative charges will flow into the second sphere.

If you then remove the wire and then the charged object you will have some positive charge left on the first sphere and some negative left on the other one.

Answer 2

If one sphere is charged by induction and then connected to another sphere using a conductor, the charge will be distributed between the two spheres. The distribution will be half of the charge in each if the two spheres are identical. When the conductor is removed, both spheres will remain charged. Some charge will be distributed in the conductor. Depending on the size of the conductor, that might be significant. The charge distribution takes place by conduction, not induction. This seems to be similar to the conductor and insulator discoveries of Stephen Gray in 1729.

If the connection between the spheres is removed before the negatively-charged object is removed from the area, some of the distributed negative charge will be removed leaving the first sphere with a deficit of negative charge. Connecting and disconnecting the second sphere is similar to connecting and disconnecting earth except that the second sphere will probably not take away as much negative charge as the earth, so the positive charge of the first sphere in the final step is not likely to be as strong as when negative charge is taken away by the earth.