Talk:Electric displacement field

No article is complete without history

The history of the Electric Displacement Field must be available, including the date it was first used, and for what purpose. I find that Gauss's law was formulated in 1835, but not published until 1867. Hence, Gauss's law, which can be written using both Electric Intensity E and Electric Displacement Field D, must have been written not prior to the year. But exact period and purpose of its introduction must be established. Bkpsusmitaa (talk) 14:44, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Dimension of the quantity

What is the dimension of electric displacement.Is it Similar to the displacement of electric dipole moment? Sea Of Enlightenment (talk) 23:35, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Delete, and change to a redirect

There already exists a good page Displacement current which contains a good description of D that is consistent with standard texts such as Ashcroft and Mermin, Griffiths and others. Currently this page contains a lot of errors; for instance it omits to include and define polarization. Rather than attempting to repair this I think it should simply be deleted, and a minor sentence or so added to the Displacement current page to consider that is also includes D. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:22, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm always happy to discuss changes. I agree, there are a lot of errors. What is it that you want to delete? Constant314 (talk) 21:35, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

This page contains material that is already in displacement current, which is both much better and more rigorous. Therefore the whole page (Electrical displacement) should be deleted and replaced by a redirect to displacement current. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:43, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with that entirely. Wikipedia does have a lot of duplication. It can be frustrating when the duplications use different symbols and when they even contradict each other. Still, people will ask, "what is the D field?" and it is more than just the progenitor of displacement current. I am in favor of fixing whatever is wrong here. There are only a few sentences about displacement current. I think it is necessary to tie the D field to displacement current, but yes, let the displacement current article do the heavy lifting. I don't follow your point about polarization; polarization definitely appears in this article. Constant314 (talk) 22:04, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

If you can revise this page so it is textbook physics, then I will consider retracting the deletion. However, currently it is not. Some specifics:

• The comment about the aether have nothing to do with Maxwells equation, they are a digression. It is also wrong to connect this as "this displacement appears as the term \epsE "
• You have incorrectly stated the charge equivalence of polarization. You have both bound charge and the dot product of the surface normal and polarization vector.
• The third paragraph is completely wrong. The polarization has to be included.
• The Definition section is OK, although the polarization part is not well spelt out. Polarization is not easy.
• The proof is messy. The standard textbook form is needed, with the conventional definitions.
• The statement with Lorentz force is wrong, that is for moving charge.
• The Definition section has zero sources, which is unacceptable
• Please check better history sources. It is generally accepted that D comes from Maxwell, not Gauss (although his original equations needed to be simplified).
• The Example using a capacitor needs to include the Polarization to be consistent with standard Physics undergrad texts.
• For such a vital article this level of error and lack of sources is not appropriate. Ldm1954 (talk)

Let's take your points one at a time. First, regarding the proof: lets delete it. Also, please sign your comments. Constant314 (talk) 23:19, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

The non signature was a WP editor glitch. I am OK to remove the Proof, but that is only a start. Ldm1954 (talk) 01:56, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

The statement about the Lorentz force doesn't seem to add anything. I am good with deleting that. Constant314 (talk) 03:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Delete Ldm1954 (talk) 09:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

With regard to the history section, I have no sources and no opinion. Feel free to do anything you want with that. As to not having enough sources in the definition and overall, feel free to tag the sections and the article or to add sources.

I think next, we should focus on the meaning of polarization and how you think what I said was wrong or incomplete. I have access to Griffiths, Jackson, and the Feynman Lectures, should you want to refer to those. It is a busy day for me, so my responses may be slow in coming. Constant314 (talk) 13:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)