16: Direct Calculation of Electrical Quantities from Charge Distributions
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- 16.1: Introduction
- This section provides an overview of the contents of the chapter.
- 16.2: Electric Dipoles
- Earlier we discussed, and calculated, the electric field of a dipole: two equal and opposite charges that are “close” to each other. (In this context, “close” means that the distance d between the two charges is much, much less than the distance of the field point P, the location where you are calculating the field.) Let’s now consider what happens to a dipole when it is placed in an external field.
- 16.3: Calculating Electric Fields of Charge Distributions
- The charge distributions we have seen so far have been discrete: made up of individual point particles. This is in contrast with a continuous charge distribution, which has at least one nonzero dimension. If a charge distribution is continuous rather than discrete, we can generalize the definition of the electric field. We simply divide the charge into infinitesimal pieces and treat each piece as a point charge.
- 16.4: Calculating Electric Potential of Charge Distributions
- This section describes how to calculate the electric potential for several common distributions of charge including the line segment, ring, disk, and infinite line.
- 16.7: Direct Calculation of Electrical Quantities from Charge Distributions (Answers)
- This section provides the answers to the odd-numbered conceptual questions and problems.