Geometrical interpretation of the electrostatic potential created by a uniformly charged straight wire

Abstract

Uniformly charged regular bodies have always been of great interest to physics as well as to several other scientific disciplines. In this work, we consider a uniformly charged straight wire with finite length and calculate the electrostatic potential created at an arbitrary point in space. The resulting expression obtained from direct integration techniques is transformed in such a way as to lead to a very insightful geometrical interpretation. It is shown that the final result depends only on the distances of the two end points of the straight wire from of the arbitrary point of interest in space. This observation leads to the immediate identification of the nature of the equipotential surfaces around a uniformly charged straight wire.