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why in coloumbs law we use to take point charges?

piyush singh , 12 Years ago
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yaswanth kumar madugula

Last Activity: 12 Years ago

Honestly I think it''s a stupid way to look at the whole thing, I never understood why it''s taught that way.

Coulomb''s law is valid for any distribution of charge, but when you have more than a single point charge you need to add up all the contributions of the individual charges to find the total field, either through a finite summation for finite charges, or through an integrations for a continuous distribution. The form of Coulomb''s law you''re familiar with is only valid for a point charge located at the origin, and the field only has a radial component, but you must remember that fields are vector fields.

he general expression for the electric field of a point charge is:

[tex] \vec{E} = \frac{q(\vec{r}-\vec{r''})}{|\vec{r}-\vec{r''}|^{3}}[/tex]

Where [tex]\vec{r}[/tex] is the point at which you want know the field, and [tex]\vec{r''}[/tex] is the postion of the point charge. Notice this reduces to the old form if you place the point charge at the origin.
 

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