If the current is interrupted or alternating, and if a telephone receiver has its terminals connected to a separate metallic circuit joined by earth plates at two other places to the earth, not on the same equipotential surface of the first circuit, sounds will be heard in the telephone due to a current passing through it.
Canal system of flow lines of current through the sea, and these might be detected by any other ships furnished with two plates dipping into the sea at stem and stern, and connected by a wire having a telephone in its circuit, provided that the two plates were not placed on the same equipotential surface of the original current flow lines.
The potential due to a thin magnet at a point whose distance from the two poles respectively is r and r' is V =m(l/r=l/r') (8) When V is constant, this equation represents an equipotential surface.
Then the charge at A together with the induced surface charge on the plate makes a certain field of electric force on the left of the plate PO, which is a zero equipotential surface.
Take any equipotential surface enclosing the whole of the electricity, and suppose this to become an actual sheet of metal connected to the earth.