VPython Potential Activity

Purpose:  The objective in this activity to to use the superposition principle to find the potential of any number of charges at any point on VPython.

Potential Of Three Charges In A Ring Orientaion

Using the VPython activity done in class, the next step was to find any potential at any position along a ring of test charges. As the picture shows, some of the potentials are cut from the view. This can be fixed by zooming in and out of the view. We can also scale everything so that it fits the window. I, also, change the potentials found in class and found them along a diagonal. The picture shows this diagonal of potentials at the center of the three charges. The three charges also have the same charge.

This picture shows my attempt at grabbing as many potentials in the view of the window as possible without zooming in or out. We can see that these potentials truly do form a ring.

This image shows potentials of three charges again, except the potential along the ring are at a greater distance. In comparison to the first image of potentials, we can see that this is consistent with the theory of potential falling at 1 over r. As the r distance approaches infinity, the potential approaches zero. The two pictures show that as I increased the radius of the ring, the potentials decreased.

This image shows the first part of the code for the potential finding program. This code merely states some of the given values that I later implement in the program to find the potential. The  first three charges are created and put into position. The I began to find the potential along a diagonal. To do this, I had to use super position. This means I had to find the potential of each individual charge at the position that I am looking for the potential for and once these potentials are found, I add them to find the net potential. The formula for finding the potential is a bit straight forward. It consists of plugging in the given values, but the key here is to get the proper position. To do this, we just take the difference in the positions of the test point and the charge and this gives us the radius.

This image is a continuation of the other two potentials along the diagonal. It is the same programming as the first, except the position is altered.

The final part of the program involves the configuration of finding the potentials along a ring of test charges. This can be done by repetition an n number of times or it can be done using a loop. To avoid confusion of positions of various potentials, I created a while loop to find the potential around the three charges. The loop was set up so that it places a test charge in 36 different positions, forming a ring. The loop stops once it reaches a rotation of 2 pi radians, or one complete revolution. The loop, if set up correctly, guarantees to find these potentials along a ring, preventing likely error from 36 repetitions of finding potentials.

Conclusion:  We see that VPython, again, proves to be a useful tool in determining a visual and numerical representation for something that is difficult when done on two dimensional paper. VPython was able to give us a great representation for the potential of three charges. We can make some alterations with the programming and add another charge at any position. We can also see that the program seemed to work fine if we altered the radial distance of the ring, as the potential began to fall. In the end, superposition helps us find the potential.