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Mystery equation


log167

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I am hoping that people here might be able to provide insight into
what context/s this equation might be relevant, particularly the contents of the brackets.

I am aware it is a strange request, related to puzzle solving,
but perhaps someone can help guide me in an interesting direction.

calc1.png.9ee315ee0cc4f960290fe2c198eeaf2c.png

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The term inside is the gradient of phiE, which is a function of r.

In physics, that could describe the gradient of a potential; the gradient of the electric potential is the electric field (with a minus sign in there somewhere). 

You are taking the second derivative of this gradient.

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Just logged on ans swansont gor there whiles I was drinking mt tea and thinking about this one.

So I will add a little extra.

 

grad phi means that we are talking about multiple dimensions, probably 3.

So r will be a probably be the radial dimension of cylindrical or spherical coordinates since many potentials will be symmetrically distributed in shells about the origin.

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And \(\varepsilon\) stands for permittivity of a medium?

Vaguely similar to Poisson's equation in electrostatics \(\varepsilon \nabla^2 \varphi = -\rho,\) where \(\rho\) is charge distribution. 

I should do the dimensional analysis. But trying to get in a first wild guess, I would try \(-\frac{d}{dr} \rho(r)\) as the RHS of the mystery equation.

Edited by taeto
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