Design, Construction, and test of an electrometer to discriminate positive and negative ions.

On the study of electrostatics, a common issue is to distinguish between positive and negative electric charges and to demonstrate that only two kinds of electric charge exist. To help students from the Electricity and Magnetism courses developed at International Elementary Particle Laboratory at the Universidad de Guanajuato and the STEAM program from Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, on these studies we have designed, constructed, and tested an electronic electrometer.  

The design and construction are simple, it operates with a 9V battery, the output is a led, a buzzer, a multimeter, or an oscilloscope. It is possible to study the kind of electric charge from electrified bodies, obtained from different procedures, quantify it and visualize it.

At this meeting, we present the design, construction, test, and results of this electronic electrometer.