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Re: How many volts

Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:47:13 -0500 (EST)
From: "Prof. John P. Ertel (wizard)" <jpe@nadn.navy.mil>

On 4 Apr 1997, John Ertel wrote:

You might not want to spend too much time on the "distribution of charge
on a conducting disk" problem --- it's already been done by Sir W. Thomson
(AKA Lord Kelvin) in ....

If my motivation was to advance science, or to solve a practical problem,
then I would follow your advice. Why waste time on problems which were
already solved? But I want to have a satisfaction of finding the answer by
myself. I know that my numerical approach is very primitive (in comparison
with analytical attack based on Laplace's equation) but it is simple and a
teaching unit can possibly be developed on its basis. So I will poste my
report here, when the project is finished, for those who might be interested.

I hope that somebody who has access to Laplace's equation software will
apply it to our "how many volts" problem (two axially mounted disks to be
more specific) and tell us how accurate the 62 V prediction was.

You are right, many physicists of 19th century, and people like Dirac, Pauli
and Feynman, were extraordinary. Most of us will never reach their level.
So what? Many people ski much better than I. This, however, does not prevent
me from enjoying the sport.
Thanks for the reference, Ludwik Kowalski

...................................................................
: Gedanken-ing is not enough; physics is an experimental science! :
: Inspired by thinking about phys-L messages on capacitors :
: Ludwik Kowalski :
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kowalskiL@alpha.montclair.edu http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski