In lecture, we worked out the rather surprising result that for an electron located at the

origin moving in the direction, the electric field at is

ˆ
2
1 2
sin 2
that, is the electric field points back to
.
This is a very surprising result, especially when you consider what it would actually look
like. Let’s say you attached a light to the moving electrical charge so you could see it at
all times. If things were set up so at the charge would cross the origin, an observer
located above the origin (perpendicular to the particle’s trajectory) a distance would
actually see the photons emitted from the charge at time .

At time , the observer at measures the electric field pointing as if the particle is at the
origin (open, dashed circle) but sees the photons emitted from the object at , so the
electron appears to be at the black circle. It is easy to show that , so at ,
the electron has traveled a distance and the photons have traveled .
There is really no great mystery to this: when the electric field was created at time , the
field propagated outward and, as it did, it changed direction to always point to where the
electron if it continued traveling at uniform velocity. The figure shows little
segments of the electric field emitted at as they propagate outward. As Richard
Feynman said, they “…file a flight plan…” when they leave the moving charge.