The calculation of the force on a dielectric material partially inserted between two parallel charged conducting plates, typically done in undergraduate classrooms using energy considerations, is performed by explicitly considering the effect of the fringing electric field.
REFERENCES
1.
Paul
Gluck
, “Force on the dielectric in a parallel plate capacitor
,” Phys. Teach.
41
, 521
–523
(2003
).2.
See, for example, David J Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, 3rd ed. (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1999), Chap. 4. The calculation of the force on the slab by the energy method starts on p. 194. The force on a dipole is given on p. 165.
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© 2004 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2004
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