Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Finite Element Modelling of a Cellular Electric Microenvironment
Published on: May 18, 2021
Electrostatic potential of point charges inside dielectric prolate spheroids
1Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-0001, USA.
None:
The exact solution to an electrostatic problem of finding the electric potential of point charges inside a dielectric prolate spheroid is discussed in this note by using the classical electrostatic theory, where the prolate spheroid is embedded in a dissimilar dielectric medium. Such a problem may find its application in hybrid solvent biomolecular simulations, in which biomolecules and a part of solvent molecules within a dielectric cavity are explicitly modeled while a surrounding dielectric continuum is used to model bulk effects of the solvent beyond the cavity. Numerical experiments have demonstrated the convergence of the proposed series solutions.
Related Concept Videos
Potential Due to a Polarized Object
Electric Field of a Charged Disk
The system's symmetry is in the cylindrical directions across the plane of the charge. As a result, the electric fields created by various surface charge elements nullify each other in the direction parallel to the surface. Thereby, the resulting electric field is perpendicular to the plane. Since the disk is...
Electric Field of a Non Uniformly Charged Sphere
Consider a non-uniformly charged sphere, for which the density of charge depends only on the distance from a point in space and not on the direction. Such a sphere has a spherically symmetrical charge distribution. Here, the electric...
Calculations of Electric Potential II
Consider a...
Gauss's Law: Spherical Symmetry
Calculations of Electric Potential I
The ring is divided into infinitesimal small arcs such that point M is equidistant from all the arcs. Here, the cylindrical coordinate system is used to calculate the electric potential at point M. A general element of the arc between angles θ and θ + dθ is of the length Rdθ and has a charge of λRdθ.

