College Physics 10th Edition by Raymond Serway,Chris Vuille

Exercise 3

Consider the Earth and a cloud layer 800 m above the planet to be the plates of a parallel-plate capacitor. (a) If the cloud layer has an area of 1.0 km 2 = 1.0 × 10 6 m 2 , what is the capacitance (b) If an electric field strength greater than 3.0 × 10 6 N/C causes the air to break down and conduct charge (lightning), what is the maximum charge the cloud can hold