Instructions for use
This applet is designed to allow you to explore charged particle motion in an electrostatic potential "valley". It also illustrates graphically that the electric field "pulls" parallel to itself by showing the field lines as a particle tries to leave a region of field which is attractive.
In particular, we have one free particle with charge -q which is attracted to
two particles both with charge +Q. The +Q
charges are fixed in position on the y-axis at +150 meters and -150 meters respectively.
The particle that is free to move is
initially at the origin moving in the positive
x-direction with speed v. We integrate the equation of motion of the free charge using
where for this situation Q = 10 q and
The potential that the charge moves in looks (as seen along the x-axis) like this:
The motion of the particle conserves the value of
To start the integration, click on the "Go" button. After the integration is finished, change the parameters as you desire, hit "Restart", and click on the "Go" button to run the integration again with different parameters.
To get this applet to run faster on a slow computer, increase "Faster" by upping that parameter with the scroll bar on the upper left. To get "smoother" field lines, reduce this parameter.
To increase the initial particle velocity in the x-direction, use the scroll bar second from the left. Clicking on the arrows of the scroll bar will change the value of v by 1 meter/sec; clicking inside the field but not on the bar itself with change the value of v by 10 meters/sec. You can also change the value of v by clicking on the bar itself and dragging it.
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