Computed drawings of four different types of electric dipoles.Upper left: An ideal point-like dipole. The field shape is scale invariant and approximates the field of any charge configuration with nonzero dipole moment at large distance.
Upper right: Discrete dipole of two opposite point charges at finite distance, a physical dipole.
Lower left: Thin round disc with uniform electric polarization along the symmetry axis.
Lower right: Plate capacitor with uniformly charged circular discs.
Although the four field configurations differ significantly, they all converge to the same dipole field at large distances. Each configuration may represent an electric dipole.
File:VFPt dipoles electric.svg by Geek3
Д.Ильин: translation, optimization