

Point particles with electric charge are referred to as point charges.įor this case, the electric dipole moment has a magnitudepqddisplaystyle pqdand is directed from the negative charge to the positive one. Often in physics the dimensions of a massive object can be ignored and can be treated as a pointlike object, i. Quantities defining the electric dipole moment of two point charges.Ī transformation from a point- shaped dipole to a finite- size electric dipole is shown.Ī molecule of water is polar because of the unequal sharing of its electrons in a bent structure.Ī separation of charge is present with negative charge in the middle (red shade), and positive charge at the ends (blue shade). The direction of dipole is usually defined from the negative charge towards the positive charge. This is unrealistic, as real dipoles have separated charge.1 However, because the charge separation is very small compared to everyday lengths, the error introduced by treating real dipoles like they are theoretically perfect is usually negligible. Theoretically, an electric dipole is defined by the first- order term of the multipole expansion, and consists of two equal and opposite charges infinitely close together.
