Electrostatic torque - a misinterpretation

Abstract

In a work published by Khachatourian and Wistrom, it was shown that a special arrangement of three conducting spheres could expel a mechanic torque on these conductors [1]. They claimed to have experimental data available, which show the validity of their claim [2]. We will demonstrate from basic calculations that this effect does not exist, but is an artefact of truncating a series expansion.