Problems for Seminar 3

Exercises involving electric fields of point charges

Find the electric field as required (problems 1-3).

1. At the origin, for a charge 𝑞0 located at (𝑥0 , 𝑦0 , 0).

1
2. At the point (1, 2 , 1) mm, for a proton located at the origin.
3. At a distance of 5 nm from an electron located at the point (2, −2, 1) nm.

4. Three identical point charges are located at the vertices of an equilateral triangle of side d. Show,
by explicit use of the superposition theorem, that the field experienced by a charge at the centre
of the triangle is zero (explicit in this context means work out the result using the summation
of the forces)

Exercises involving electric fields of point-charge distributions

Find the electric field, or its properties, as required (problems 1-3).

1. The electric field of 3 equidistant identical charges lined along the z-axis, with the central charge
at the origin.
2. The position vector of the stationary point of charges 𝑞1 = 4 𝑚𝐶 and 𝑞2 = −2 𝑚𝐶 located at
−𝑑 +𝑑
𝑟1 = 2 𝑘̂ and ⃗⃗⃗
⃗⃗⃗ 𝑟2 = 2 𝑘̂ ; where 𝑑 = 1 𝑚𝑚.

3. The stationary point of charges 𝑞1 = 4 𝑚𝐶 and 𝑞2 = −2 𝑚𝐶 located at ⃗⃗⃗

𝑟1 = (−1, −1) and ⃗⃗⃗
𝑟2 =
(0,0) measured in metres.

4. Two charges of magnitudes −𝑞 and −2𝑞 have position vectors ⃗⃗⃗ 𝑟1 = (0,0,0) and ⃗⃗⃗
𝑟2 = (𝑑, 0,0)
, where d is the separation distance between the charges. Calculate the electrostatic field acting
on a third charge at the midpoint between the two fixed charges.