Home

Search

Collections

Journals

About

Contact us

My IOPscience

Lines of force of the electric point dipole

This content has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text.
2013 Eur. J. Phys. 34 L39
(http://iopscience.iop.org/0143-0807/34/2/L39)
View the table of contents for this issue, or go to the journal homepage for more

Download details:
IP Address: 202.92.134.5
This content was downloaded on 23/08/2016 at 08:46

Please note that terms and conditions apply.

You may also be interested in:

On the electromagnetic momentum of static charge and steady current distributions
Andre Gsponer
Time-domain Green dyadics for temporally dispersive, bi-isotropic media
Igor Egorov
Electric charge on humans: should students buy what the textbooks sell?
Josip Slisko
Electrostatics of hyperbolic conductors
John Lekner
Wave Functions for the Hydrogen Atom in Spheroidal Coordinates II: Interaction with a Point Charge
and with a Dipole
P D Robinson
Chain formation in a model dipolar liquid: computer simulation study
Adam Kachel and Zygmunt Gburski
Simulation of water potential for the electronic structure of serine
Wang Xing-Rong and Zheng Hao-Ping

IOP PUBLISHING

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS

Eur. J. Phys. 34 (2013) L39L41

doi:10.1088/0143-0807/34/2/L39

LETTERS AND COMMENTS

Lines of force of the electric point

dipole
Zafar Ahmed 1 and Aditya Nandan Savita 2
1
2

Nuclear Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai 400 085, India
Human Resource Development Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai 400 085,
India
E-mail: zahmed@barc.gov.in and adityanandan.iitd@gmail.com

Received 27 November 2012, in final form 14 December 2012

Published 12 February 2013
Online at stacks.iop.org/EJP/34/L39
Abstract

In textbooks the pictures of exact and approximate equi-potentials and the

lines of force of a dimensional electric point dipole are usually presented
without mentioning the equation of lines of force. Generally, these pictures
are generated by numerical methods. Smythe [2] provides a special method to
obtain an involved expression for it, but in this letter we show that the usual

due to two point

and well-known approximation to the potential V 2Ka cos
r2
charges (q) separated by a distance a itself poses a more simply solvable
problem that yields a simple expression for lines of force.
In three dimensions, the electric point dipole is conceived as two point charges q placed at
x = a. Then the electrostatic potential at a point (x, y, z) is given as [1]


1
1
V (x, y, z) = K 

,
(1)
(x a)2 + y2 + z2
(x + a)2 + y2 + z2
q
. The electric field components can be obtained as Ex = V
, Ey =
here the constant K = 4
x
0
V
V
y , Ez = z . Lines of force can then be obtained by solving the partial differential equation
dx
dy
dz
=
= .
(2)
Ex
Ey
Ez
For the potential (1) of the electric point dipole this equation is only solved numerically and
beautiful two-dimensional pictures of the equi-potentials and lines of force are presented (see
e.g., figures 413 in [1], and figure 1.08a in [2]). In principle, equi-potentials and lines of force
are the intersection of a three-dimensional surface and a plane. However, surprisingly, authors
do not mention the plane considered in these pictures.
Perhaps it is only Smythe [2] who gives an analytic expression for lines of force for (1).
According to him, due to symmetry any section of the field by a plane including the x-axis
will look the same; one may take the section made by the xy-plane. So in this plane the
equi-potential of the dipole can be expressed as V (x, y, 0) = constant, namely


1
1
= C.
(3)

V = 
(x a)2 + y2
(x + a)2 + y2
c 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd Printed in the UK & the USA
0143-0807/13/020039+03$33.00 

L39

L40

Letters and Comments

Usually this potential function is approximated for small values of a as



K
2ax
2ax
2Kax
V 
1+
1+
2
.
2 + y2 )
2 + y2 )
2
2
2(x
2(x
(x
+ y2 )3/2
2 x +y

(4)

This in polar coordinates is better known as the dipole potential [1, 37]
cos
(5)
V = 2Ka 2 .
r
Most of the textbooks [3, 7] present the equi-potentials and lines of forces using (5). However,
the equation lines of force arising from this remain elusive. In the following we show that it is
a good exercise for students, which is invariably left unmentioned.
The equi-potentials are the curves along which V (x, y) is constant:


V
V
dx +
dy = 0.
(6)
dV =
x
y
This condition gives us a first order ordinary differential equation for equi-potentials as
dy
V/x
=
.
(7)
dx
V/y
Hence the differential equation for the family of orthogonal curves to these equi-potentials is
V/y
dy
=
,
(8)
dx
V/x
which is nothing but the equation of lines of force as given in equation (2), derived alternatively.
So for the approximate dipole potential (4) the differential equation for the equi-potentials is
dy
y2 2x2
=
,
(9)
dx
3xy
whereas for lines of force we get
dy
3xy
= 2
.
(10)
dx
2x y2
This first order differential equation is a homogeneous equation [8] which can be solved by
substituting y = tx. We find
3t
dx
dt
(2 t 2 ) dt
= .
(11)
t +x =

2
dx
2t
t(1 + t 2 )
x
Integrating by substituting t 2 = s, we get


 
dx
3
1 3 1

ds =
log s log(1 + s) = log C2 x
(12)
s
2 (1 + s)
x
2
to finally obtain the curve yielding approximate lines of force for the electric point dipole as
y2
= C2 .
(13)
2
(x + y2 )3/2
This, along with the equi-potential curves from (4) as
x
= C1
(14)
(x2 + y2 )3/2
help us to plot the field about two equal and opposite point charges called electric dipole
by varying the constants C1 , C2 . In fact, we need not redraw these pictures as they are
given in textbooks [37]. This expression (13) does appear as a further approximation to
the expression obtained in [2]. However, surprisingly, this expression (13) and its derivation
has been overlooked for the most part as an illustration or problem in textbooks [1, 37]. Also,
to the best of our knowledge, the analytic treatment of lines of force by solving (2) for (1) is
still open for the exact result.

Letters and Comments

L41

Acknowledgment

ZA thanks the other physics trainees of the 56th batch (OECS-2012) of HRDD of BARC for
their interest in the ordinary differential equations course.
References
[1] Feynman R P, Leighton R B and Sands M 2010 The Feynman Lectures on Physics vol 2 (Bombay: Narosa) p 57,
724
[2] Smythe W R 1968 Static and Dynamic Electricity (New York: McGraw-Hill) pp 79
[3] Phug E M and Phug E W 1960 Principles of Electricity and Magnetism (London: Addison-Wesley) p 39
[4] Scott W T 1966 The Physics of Electricity and Mangetism (New York: Wiley) pp 1023
[5] Kurremleyer B and Mais W H 1967 Electricity and Magnetism (London: Van Nostrand) pp 712
[6] Resnik D and Halliday R 1978 Physics vol 1 and 2 (New York: Wiley) p 584
[7] Sears F W, Zemansky M W and Young H D 1982 University Physics 6th edn (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley)
pp 5045
[8] See for example, Simmons G F and Krantz S G 2007 Differential Equations (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill)
p 26