Reading Hertz's Own Dipole Theory

The plot depicts the time evolution of the lines of force of the electric field around a Hertzian dipole. It straightforwardly visualizes the function (see Details for further information).

Thus it recomputes Hertz's famous figures that he had created for several instants of time in the interval , being the period of short dipole electric oscillations. The lines of force are plotted in the - plane in a square of size approximately , where λ is the corresponding wavelength. Note that the reader may reproduce questionable ranges (i.e. at =) of Hertz’s diagrams, including the self-intersecting lines of force.