29.3.1 Superposition

The Biot-Savart law is the starting point for generating all magnetic fields, just as our earlier expression for the electric field of a point charge was the starting point for generating all electric fields. Magnetic fields, like electric fields, have been found experimentally to obey the principle of superposition. If there are n moving point charges, the net magnetic field is given by the vector sum

\vec{B}_{total} = \vec{B}_{1} + \vec{B}_{2} + \dots + \vec{B}_{n}

(29.2)

where each individual $\vec{B}$ is calculated with Equation 29.1. The principle of superposition will be the basis for calculating the magnetic fields of several important current distributions.