Simulator for electrostatics

Question

I am searching for a tool that visualizes the electric field/potential for simple electrostatic configurations like

• conducting/polarized sphere in an uniform electric field
• conducting/polarized sphere in a field generated by some simple charge density (like e.g. finite line charge)

I did a search on the internet but did not find anything useful. Does someone know such a tool (preferably for Linux). Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

I've used Paul Falstad's applets for classes I've taught. He has some very impressive visualizations there including some that you don't see often (like the magnetic vector potential). He always links to the Java source code, so if you can program, it'll give you a good base to start with.

Check out http://www.falstad.com/vector3de/ for an example.

Answer 2

There are lot of visualizations available on mathematica demonstration site. 

All you need is free wolfram player(downloadable from the same website) to run these free to use demonstrations. This application is platform independent. I hope they help !! Check this link: Wolfram electrostatic demos