title: Unified Field Theory: Mathematical Treatise: Part I: Canonical Electrodynamics
author: R. A. Villecco
description: The author, a Vietnam War naval intelligence officer and Propulsion Engineering School instructor, is a mathematical physicist with former affiliations with academia (California Institute of Technology, U.C. Long Beach, MIT, University of Tennessee), industry (SAIC, CSA, Teledyne-Brown, Sanders, DMJM), and government (Atomic Energy Commission, DOE, Navy, Air Force, DOD). He lives semi-retired with his wife Judy and grandson Joshua....
zlib_text: © Springer International Publishing AG 2017
  
  Andrea Macchi, Giovanni Moruzzi and Francesco PegoraroProblems in Classical
  Electromagnetism[https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63133-2_1](A448300_1_En_1_Chapter.html)
  
  # Chapter 1 Basics of Electrostatics
  
  Andrea Macchi1  , Giovanni Moruzzi1 and Francesco Pegoraro1
  
  (1)
  
  Department of Physics “Enrico Fermi”, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
  
  Andrea Macchi
  
  Email: [andrea.macchi@ino.it](mailto:andrea.macchi@ino.it)
  
  
  Topics. The electric charge. The electric field. The superposition principle.
  Gauss’s law. Symmetry considerations. The electric field of simple charge
  distributions (plane layer, straight wire, sphere). Point charges and
  Coulomb’s law. The equations of electrostatics. Potential energy and electric
  potential. The equations of Poisson and Laplace. Electrostatic energy.
  Multipole expansions. The field of an electric dipole.
  
  
  Units. An aim of this book is to provide formulas compatible with both SI
  (French: Système International d’U