Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-physics-course-of-the-year-4-of-the-natural-sciences-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2016/paper-1/section-a/a3/solution

For the potential of an inverse-radius spherical charge density, assume there is no additional point charge at the origin and choose . The enclosed charge is for , and outside. Gauss's law then gives
Integrating the field inward from infinity,
The potential and its first radial derivative are continuous at , since there is no surface charge there. The integrable density singularity has a finite potential limit .
Figure 1.
The potential falls linearly inside the inverse-radius charge cloud and joins a reciprocal-radius exterior tail
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