🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov18.172004.17579@husc3.harvard.edu> mlevin@husc8.harvard.edu (Michael Levin) writes:
>
>    I am wondering if scientists or engineers have any need for the
>following computer program. Suppose you wanted to figure out what
>distribution of point sources of some force (electric, magnetic,
>whatever) produce a field of a particular geometry. You would draw the
>field configuration that you wanted, give it to the program, and the
>program would tell you where (and how strong) the point sources needed
>to be in order to produce a field of that shape. This would work for
>any force type, not just the square-of-distance type of gravity and
>electromagnetic - you could enter the description of the force's
>activity with distance, so the program would be general in that sense.
>So, do engineers or physicists ever do this sort of thing? Would there
>be any use for such a program? Please reply to
>mlevin@husc8.harvard.edu.
>
>Mike Levin

Sounds like a very difficult program to write.  What happens if you
specify a field distribution that does not correspond to a possible
charge configuration?  This would be a useful program, but I do not
think it is possible to write, unless it can only compute point
charge distributions of fields produced by only a few particles.

ajackson@ernie.princeton.edu