Revista Mexicana de Física ISSN: 0035-001X
[email protected] Sociedad Mexicana de Física A.C. México Medina, L.; Ley Koo, E. Mathematics motivated by physics: the electrostatic potential is the Coulomb integral transform of the electric charge density Revista Mexicana de Física, vol. 54, núm. 2, diciembre, 2008, pp. 153-159 Sociedad Mexicana de Física A.C. Distrito Federal, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=57028302013 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative ENSENANZA˜ REVISTA MEXICANA DE FISICA´ E 54 (2) 153–159 DICIEMBRE 2008 Mathematics motivated by physics: the electrostatic potential is the Coulomb integral transform of the electric charge density L. Medinaa and E. Ley Koo a;b aFacultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autonoma´ de Mexico,´ Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico´ D.F., 04510, Mexico,´ e-mail:
[email protected], bInstituto de F´ısica, Universidad Nacional Autonoma´ de Mexico,´ Apartado Postal 20-364, 01000 Mexico D.F., Mexico, e-mail: eleykoo@fisica.unam.mx Recibido el 19 de octubre de 2007; aceptado el 11 de marzo de 2007 This article illustrates a practical way to connect and coordinate the teaching and learning of physics and mathematics. The starting point is the electrostatic potential, which is obtained in any introductory course of electromagnetism from the Coulomb potential and the superposition principle for any charge distribution. The necessity to develop solutions to the Laplace and Poisson differential equations is also recognized, identifying the Coulomb potential as the generating function of harmonic functions.