Talk:Laplace's equation

Sorry for mixup
I thought someone had replaced many of the nabla symbols with delta symbols and changed everything to nablas removing the deltas.

Sorry, my mistake; I have just realized the use of a notation I was not familiar with. I apologize - have reverted the article to original state.

152.3.68.83 (talk) 21:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Qualitative and technical description
This article currently lacks a qualitative and technical definition of the Laplace equation. See Spherical_harmonics for a good technical wording for the definition. A qualitative definition remains to be provided and should be included at the very beginning of the article so that a non-expert reader can gain some understanding. --BBUCommander (talk) 20:45, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Numerical solution
This is a great article, but I think it would be great if it gave a primer on how to solve the equation numerically. Joelthelion (talk) 20:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Wrong index in Curvilinear coordinates
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the second index on the metric should be $$i$$, not $$j$$, inside the derivative. I.e., the equation would read


 * $$ \Delta f =\frac{\partial}{\partial \xi^j}\left(\frac{\partial f}{\partial \xi^k}g^{kj}\right) + \frac{\partial f}{\partial \xi^j} g^{jm}\Gamma^n_{mn} =0,$$

Currently there are two free indices, $$i,j$$, in the first term and none in the second term. I believe there should be no free indices since it is a scalar equation.

Mjohnrussell (talk) 14:04, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Punctuation, div dot
Good faith edit was reverted because punctuation does not match rest of the article. I understand the reversion, but that leaves the original problem: the text is not clear.

$$\nabla \cdot$$ is the divergence operator, $$\nabla$$ is the gradient operator

Until you either describe the dot operator, or show that the dot is part of the "divergence operator", it's just a speck on the screen, and the paragraph is meaningless unless you already know what it means. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.200.27.15 (talk) 05:49, 08 November 2021 (UTC)


 * The divergence operator is defined in the sentence as $$\nabla \cdot$$ and in the link to divergence, just as $$ \Delta = \nabla \cdot \nabla = \nabla^2$$ is defined the Laplace operator and in the link. I don't think there will be much confusion unless we insert a lot more punctuation and inconsistency. And since the dot is a center dot, I don't think most people will confuse it with a period.—Anita5192 (talk) 16:51, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Top image
why is there a 3d plot of gamma function on Laplace equation page. I can't see the relevance? Rdsk2014 (talk) 21:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)