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  • Electric field of a charge distribution
Topics:  Charged particles, electrostatics, electric fields, charge distributions.

Pre-requisite skills:  Basic understanding of the electric field.

Approximate completion time:  Under an hour.
Provide sufficient detail to verify that the assignment was completed in a meaningful manner.


Applet by Wolfgang Christian
1.  Place the four charges at the corners of the applet window. 

(a) Judging by the electric field lines, which charges have like charge, and which charges are oppositely charged?

(b) By looking at the electric field lines, do the charges all have the same magnitude? Explain.

2. Place charge 2 on top of charge 3. 

(a)  What happens to the electric field lines originally associated with these two charges?

(b) What does this tell you about how the charges on particles 2 and 3 compare?

3. Now place charge 2 on top of charge 1.  Explain what you see and what this tells you about the charges on particles 1 and 2.

4. Now place all four charges on top of each other.  Explain what you see and what this tells you about the four charges.

Helpful Resources

  1. The Book of Phyz - Electrostatics by Dean Baird.
  2. The Physics Hypertextbook by Glenn Elert
  3. Electromagnetism Applets by Angel Franco Garcia (in Spanish).
  4. Electric Field (Physics) by Sadahisa Kamikawa.
  5. The Electric Force by Physics 2000
  6. Electric and Magnetic Interactions:  The Movies by Ruth Chabay
  7. Electric Fields by Angel Franco Garcia (in Spanish)
  8. Electric Charges in Java by Sebastian Rodriguez.
  9. P10D - Electricity and Magnetism by Janak Sodha

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