# Homework Help: Electric Field Strength at Center of Triangle

1. Dec 15, 2012

### rbrayana123

1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data

Three positive charges, A, B and C, of 3 × 10-6, 2 × 10-6, and 3 × 10-6 Coulombs respectively, are located at the corners of an equilateral triangle of side 0.2 meters.

Find the magnitude in newtons/Coulomb of the electric field at the center of the triangle.

2. Relevant equations

E = $\frac{1}{4∏ε}$ Ʃqjroj/roj2

3. The attempt at a solution

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong but I feel like it's something simple (and perhaps geometric). My triangle has a base on the x axis and it's origin is at the center of the base. My basic approach is to find the center of the triangle.

Then, I compute the distance from each point charge to the center via Pythagorean.

Once I have that, I compute the electric field strength for each particle. Then, I take the x and y components and add them.

I've tried different centers for the triangle but I'm always off by a factor of 10.

2. Dec 16, 2012

### rbrayana123

Hey, just wanted to say that I figured it out. As I suspected, it was a geometric mistake when calculating the center of the triangle. Looks like I need to go over some middle school math =/