In the present post, we calculate the dependence on time of the charges on two conducting spheres connected by a wire until reaching the electrostatic equilibrium.
We were taught that grounding a conductor (by connecting it to the ground with a wire) means fixing its electric potential to zero. That’s right, but what is the physical mechanism that fixes to zero the electric potential? Let’s see how grounding a conductor works in physical terms.
When I was a student, I remember they taught me that the method of images to solve the problem of finding the electrostatic potential outside a grounded conducting sphere in the presence of an external point charge is a kind of miracle. But in physics, there are not miracles. Here are the facts why the method works
The concepts of electric dipole, potential of dipole, pure and physical dipoles are explained.