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  • Magnetic field produced by a current segment.
Topics:  Magnetic field, Biot-Savart law, long straight wire.

Pre-requisite skills: Right-hand rule.

Approximate completion time:  Under an hour.

Provide sufficient detail to verify that the assignment was completed in a meaningful manner.

Applet by Wolfgang Christian
The above applet shows a current source (represented by the red dot) that either points into or out of the plane of the screen.   Naturally, this current source creates a magnetic field, which can be displayed with the mouse.  (See instructions.)

1.  Using the mouse, create magnetic field lines that represent field strengths that are equally spaced in value.   First, create a field line that corresponds to B = 0.5.  Then create one that corresponds to B = 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and so on.


2.   Describe the spacing between the field lines as a function of the radial distance r from the current source.


3.   Using graph paper, plot the field strength as a function of the radial distance r from the center.  Describe the resulting plot.  Can you confirm your result in your textbook?

4.  Which direction is the current pointing in the applet?   How do you know this?

Helpful Resources

  1. The Biot-Savart Law by Fu Kwun Hwang.
  2. Biot-Savart Law Applications by Carl R. (Rod) Nave.
  3. Biot-Savart and Ampere's Laws by H. F. Cheung
  4. Magnetic Fields by Angel Franco Garcia.
  5. Loi de Biot-Savard (Biot-Savart) Law by Sibastien Bilodeau
  6. P10D - Electricity and Magnetism by Janak Sodha

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