My question may be very basic, but I can't think of a reasonable explanation for this.
Consider a solid charged sphere. Now, we have an electric field inside the solid sphere, but at any particular point there are charges infinitesimally close to the point. As I see it, these charges should contribute to an infinite value of the electric field.
One might possibly argue that at any given point, infinitely-close charges are distributed uniformly everywhere and hence their effects cancel out. But at the surface of the sphere the uniformity of infinitely-close charges is not present and hence here we must have infinite field, but that is not the case as well! Where are we going wrong?
Also, if we think of electric field at that point in continuous charge distribution, the contribution of electric field might exist finitely from nearby charges with both charge and distance between them tending to zero, but for the very small charge present exactly there, the electric field contribution from itself must be infinite with charge being finitely small and distance being exactly 0. What's wrong here?
I have strong suspicions, is it sensible and correct to define electric fields at such a close vicinity of other continuous charges?
No comments:
Post a Comment