Experimental and Analytical Study of the Electric Potential using Lagrange Polynomials

Integrating abstract notions as electric potential are challenging engineering tasks to most students. The present paper proposes a practical experiment for describing the electrical field distribution using Lagrange's polynomials. First, we aim to exemplify that the interpolation polynomials are useful for the approximation of the electric potential, using the finite element method to outline the way the size of the finite element and the degree of the interpolation polynomials influence computational errors. Secondly, an experimental circuit board has been developed to enable students to measure effectively the electrostatic potential.