Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-2-paper-of-the-university-of-oxford/2017/9/c/solution

Put the three wires at with and each current along , out of the page. Adding their Biot-Savart law magnetic fields gives
For , all three -components have the same sign, so they cannot cancel. On , a zero of the remaining component satisfies
Excluding the wire positions themselves, the two and only two finite zeros are
The magnetic field lines circulate counterclockwise about each current near that wire. Far away they circle the combined total current . The two nulls separate the nearby circulation regions in the original magnetic field line plot below.
Figure 1.
Magnetic field and two nulls for three equal parallel currents
. Coordinates are measured from the middle wire in units of the neighbouring-wire spacing. All three currents point out of the page; the two field zeros are marked between the wires. Details.

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