1. make a picture of the situation where you want to determine the potential of a charged rod outside of the rod along an axis through it. 2. write an expression for the part of the electric field at the point of interest that is caused by a single point charge of the many that are distributed in the rod. 3. describe how the part of the potential at your point of interest, that is caused by the single point charge, is related to part of electric field at that point. 4. there are now several ways to determine the potential at the point of interest. (1) you could add all the parts of the potential from every point charge making up the bar or (2) you could add all the parts of the electric field from every point charge making up the bar and then use that electric field to get the potential at the point of interest. describe how you would use each of these methods and discuss their pros and cons. 5. there is another method that might solve this problem. you could try to use gauss' law to determine the electric field at the point of interest. then use that electric field to determine the potential at that point. discuss whether or not this would be a useful approach. if it is, describe the gaussian surface that you would use. if not, describe why gauss' law is not useful for this application tric potential from a line of charge 6. repeat steps 1 - 5 for a point of interest along the perpendicular to the axis through the rod that is through the center of the rod.