 Their work demonstrated that little or no trace of virtual electrode formation could be found.This left a mystery; both their machine and previous experiments showed clear and consistent evidence of the formation of a potential well that was trapping ions, which was previously ascribed to the formation of the electrodes.Exploring this problem, Bowden-Reid developed new field equations for the device that explained the potential well without electrode formation, and demonstrated that this matched both their results and those of previous experiments.