Abstract
Recently Pollock and Alder have come to the surprising conclusion that the first virial coefficient for the macroscopic electric field produced by a permanent dipole as calculated by a continuum argument differs by a factor of 2 from that found directly from a virial calculation or from a molecular dynamics simulation. Here it is shown that the origin of this discrepancy is the result of an incorrect identification of a cavity field with a macroscopic field. When the correct identification is made there is complete agreement among the results of a continuum calculation, the use of a cubic lattice, and the virial expansion. In higher order the results of these models are expected to differ and molecular dynamics simulations should prove useful as a check on the applicability of the various models.

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