Page:A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - Volume 2.djvu/312

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280
CURRENT-SHEETS.
[676.

(3) The case of an ellipsoid uniformly magnetized parallel to a given line has been discussed in Art. 437.

If the ellipsoid is coiled with wire in parallel and equidistant planes, the magnetic force within the ellipsoid will be uniform.

(4) A Cylindric Magnet or Solenoid.

676.] If the body is a cylinder having any form of section and bounded by planes perpendicular to its generating lines, and if is the potential at the point (, , ) due to a plane area of surface-density unity coinciding with the positive end of the solenoid, and the potential at the same point due to a plane area of surface-density unity coinciding with the negative end, then, if the cylinder is uniformly and longitudinally magnetized with intensity unity, the potential at the point (, , ) will be

.
(10)

If the cylinder, instead of being a magnetized body, is uniformly lapped with wire, so that there are windings of wire in unit of length, and if a current, , is made to flow through this wire, the magnetic potential outside the solenoid is as before,

.
(11)

but within the space bounded by the solenoid and its plane ends

.
(12)

The magnetic potential is discontinuous at the plane ends of the solenoid, but the magnetic force is continuous.

If , , the distances of the centres of inertia of the positive and negative plane end respectively from the point (, , ), are very great compared with the transverse dimensions of the solenoid, we may write

,
(13)

where is the area of either section.

The magnetic force outside the solenoid is therefore very small, and the force inside the solenoid approximates to a force parallel to the axis in the positive direction and equal to .

If the section of the solenoid is a circle of radius , the values of and may be expressed in the series of spherical harmonics given in Thomson and Tait's Natural Philosophy, Art. 546, Ex. II.,

when , (14)
when . (15)