After finishing your graphs, think about how the charges interact with each other to create an electric field. 

For each charge distribution, consider the following questions: 

• Where are the field lines closest together?
• Where are they farthest apart? 
• Where do you think the field felt by a positive test charge would be greatest?*  (Is there more than spot for this?)
• Where do you think the field felt by a positive test charge would be weakest?* 
• Is there a correlation between the strength of the field and the distance between field lines? 

 

*Hint:  Two things to keep in mind:  1)The equation for electric field at a given point is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the charge.  This means the farther away from the charge, the weaker the field.  2) Electric fields follow the principle of superposition, which means that they add up just like regular numbers.