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1. Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 20:12:57 UTC Robert McNees

   It was... unnecessarily difficult, getting Mathematica to plot a small set of electric field lines for a simple set of charges.

   None of the built-in plot types (StreamPlot, etc) are compatible with all the standard rules for field lines!

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 20-Mar-2024 20:19:31 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     Basically had to numerically solve for the integral curves from a set of starting points around the charge, and extend them until they reached the other charge.

     It should not be this involved! But visualizations like StreamPlot aren't consistent with all the rules for field lines that we teach in intro classes, and the problems become more pronounced when there are more than two charges. Yikes.

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 01:55:07 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • sudnadja

     @sudnadja Oh nice, thanks for the link! I'll have a look at how they draw their diagrams. Unfortunately, that demo does things like draw colliding field lines. But it's better than other examples I've seen.

   • sudnadja (sudnadja@dice.camp)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 01:55:08 UTC sudnadja

     in reply to

     @mcnees That looks fairly similar to the example that's in the wolfram demonstrations project: https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/ElectricFieldLinesDueToACollectionOfPointCharges/

   • Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 15:09:29 UTC Robert McNees

     in reply to

     • sudnadja

     @sudnadja Oh wow, I did not know that. Thanks!

   • sudnadja (sudnadja@dice.camp)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 15:09:30 UTC sudnadja

     in reply to

     @mcnees also don’t underestimate the help you can get if you have a support contract, even things like programming help.