- #1
gotjrgkr
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Homework Statement
Hi!
I have a question about calculating electric field made by finite point charges
q[itex]_{1}[/itex],q[itex]_{2}[/itex],..., q[itex]_{n}[/itex].
From the book "introduction to electrodynamics", you can see that the electric field E at a point P made by the finite point charges can be calculated by the below equation;
E(P) = [itex]\frac{1}{4\pi\epsilon_{0}}[/itex][itex]\sum[/itex][itex]^{n}_{i=1}[/itex][itex]\frac{q_{i}}{r_{i}}[/itex][itex]\hat{r[itex]_{i}[/itex]}[/itex] where r[itex]_{i}[/itex]'s are the distances between a point charge and the point P.
I can see that above electric field makes sense if P is located at a different position from each point charge q[itex]_{i}[/itex].
However, what if P is located at one of those places at which the point charges are located? For example, what is the electric field at the position at which q[itex]_{1}[/itex] is located?? As you can see, the electric field function has a singular point at the point, so that I think it is impossible to calculate it. Am I right?? Does it mean that the electric field doesn't exist at the point??