2014/10/21 by T. S. Van Kortryk, Van Kortryk, T. S.
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Field-Flow Fractionation Techniques #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #History and Theory of Mathematics #Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph) #hep-ex #physics.hist-ph #physics.pop-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1410.6832
Added section about current carrying segments, reformatted as 2 columns, more references
openalex publication_date 2014/10/21 · arxiv created 2014/11/24 · arxiv updated 2015/08/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The remarkable geometries of ellipsoidal equipotentials and their associated gradient fields, as produced by uniformly charged straight-line segments, are discussed at an elementary level, motivated by recent treatments intended for introductory physics classes. Some effort is made to put the results into a broader conceptual and historical context. The equipotentials and vector fields were first obtained for the electrostatic problem by George Green in his famous 1828 essay. Related problems were commonly found on the Mathematical Tripos examinations given at the University of Cambridge, and their solutions were widely disseminated by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Peter Guthrie Tait, and Edward Routh during the last half of the 19th century.