Abstract
The electrostatic field in the neighborhood of a slender, axisymmetric conductor is expanded in prolate-spheroidal harmonics to obtain approximations to the capacitance, the dipole moments induced by both axial and transverse fields, and the induced charge on a grounded boss in a uniform field. The capacitance calculated for a right-circular cylinder with δ=diameter/length<1 is found to be within 5% of the more accurate results calculated by Smythe. The corresponding comparisons for the dipole moments and the induced charge on a cylindrical boss are less impressive for non-small δ but suggest the general utility of the slender-body approximation for δ of the order of 10−1 or less.

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