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In electromagnetism, current density is the amount of charge per unit time that flows through a unit area of a chosen cross section. [1] The current density vector is defined as a vector whose magnitude is the electric current per cross-sectional area at a given point in space, its direction being that of the motion of the positive charges at this point.
where this time is the charge density, is the current density vector, and is the current source-sink term. The current source and current sinks are where the current density emerges σ > 0 {\displaystyle \sigma >0} or vanishes σ < 0 {\displaystyle \sigma <0} , respectively (for example, the source and sink can represent the two poles of an ...
Given a current such as electric current—charge per time, current density would also be a flux according to the transport definition—charge per time per area. Due to the conflicting definitions of flux , and the interchangeability of flux , flow , and current in nontechnical English, all of the terms used in this paragraph are sometimes ...
The most common description of the electromagnetic field uses two three-dimensional vector fields called the electric field and the magnetic field.These vector fields each have a value defined at every point of space and time and are thus often regarded as functions of the space and time coordinates.
If the electric field is uniform, the electric flux passing through a surface of vector area A is = = , where E is the electric field (having the unit V/m), E is its magnitude, A is the area of the surface, and θ is the angle between the electric field lines and the normal (perpendicular) to A.
For spatial density, current, current density and flux, the notations are common from one context to another, differing only by a change in subscripts. For current density, t ^ {\displaystyle \mathbf {\hat {t}} } is a unit vector in the direction of flow, i.e. tangent to a flowline.
The final column lists some special properties that some of the quantities have, such as their scaling behavior (i.e. whether the quantity is intensive or extensive), their transformation properties (i.e. whether the quantity is a scalar, vector, matrix or tensor), and whether the quantity is conserved.
The charge density appears in the continuity equation for electric current, and also in Maxwell's Equations. It is the principal source term of the electromagnetic field; when the charge distribution moves, this corresponds to a current density. The charge density of molecules impacts chemical and separation processes.