Finite line of charge.

A finite line of uniform charge is either ignored or handled incompletely in most textbooks. New simple and practical expressions are presented for the electric potential and electric field for this charge distribution. The equipotentials are shown to be prolate ellipsoids and the electric field lines follow hyperboloids confocal to the ellipsoids. The common foci are shown to be the endpoints of the charged line segment. These geometries are demonstrated with simple VPython programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]