Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-2-paper-of-the-university-of-oxford/2016/8/b/solution
Past exam of the physics 2 paper of the University of Oxford 2016 8 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Use the standard infinite-plane boundary condition: the sheet is an equipotential, with no imposed uniform background electric field and the electric potential tending to zero far from the localized charges. The images of at and at are at and at .
At the point directly below the real charges, horizontal components vanish. The first real-image pair contributes along , while the second contributes . ThereforeFor , the electric field points downwards into the sheet. The expression is the one-sided vacuum limit; the electric field inside the conducting material is zero. A prescribed uniform background field would be an additional boundary condition and would change this result.
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