Re: funny capacitor

[Bob Sciamanda <trebor@VELOCITY.NET>]

Here is your bug!  You are forcing one of your local conductors to always
be at the same (zero) potential even when charges vary on it and other
conductors.  You can choose any spacepoint as your potential reference,
but - unless it is at infinity - its potential relative to other points
(and infinity) will vary as the charges on your N conductors vary.

Bob Sciamanda
Physics, Edinboro Univ of PA (em)
trebor@velocity.net
http://www.velocity.net/~trebor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ludwik Kowalski" <KowalskiL@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2001 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: funny capacitor


> > In using the term "potential" (for V1, V2, V3 and V4) I
> was referring to a difference of potentials with respect to
> the object # 4, the enclosure where V4 was declared to
> be zero. The purpose of adding the enclosure (walls
> called "infinity") was to make this crystal-clear.