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Jake 7174
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Homework Statement
An electric dipole with charge ±q is separated by distance d. This dipole is enclosed in a spherical space of radius r = a such that the center of the dipole is located at the origin and the entire dipole in encased in the space. In other words the charges are at ±d/2 and a > d/2 Find the total energy everywhere outside the sphere.
Homework Equations
WE = ∫∫∫ 1/2 ε0 E2 dv
Edipole = Qd cosθ ar / (2 π ε0 r3) + Qd sinθ aθ / (4 π ε0 r3)
Where ar and aθ are unit vectors.
The Attempt at a Solution
I know I must do the above integral twice. I need to first do this to ∞ and again with the spherical space. My answer will be the difference between the two. I am having issue because this was something that is not in the text. We only covered briefly in lecture.
I think I have a problem with my approach. I first want to find the energy to infinity. So I do this
ε0/2 ∫∫∫ Qd cosθ ar / (2 π ε0 r3) + Qd sinθ aθ / (4 π ε0 r3) dr from r=0 to ∞ dθ from θ=0 to π dφ from φ=0 to 2π
The result of this blows up due to the 0 in the limits of the first integral. Not sure what to do about this. I suppose I could set my limits from r = a to infinity. I guess this would result in my answer provided my equations listed in the equation section are valid. This leaves a huge question in my understanding however. What if I were asked for the energy in just the sphere? Then my limits would have to have the 0.
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