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In physics (specifically electromagnetism), Gauss's law, also known as Gauss's flux theorem (or sometimes Gauss's theorem), is one of Maxwell's equations. It is an application of the divergence theorem , and it relates the distribution of electric charge to the resulting electric field .
It is impossible to mathematically prove Newton's law from Gauss's law alone, because Gauss's law specifies the divergence of g but does not contain any information regarding the curl of g (see Helmholtz decomposition). In addition to Gauss's law, the assumption is used that g is irrotational (has zero curl), as gravity is a conservative force:
Any inverse-square law can instead be written in a Gauss's law-type form (with a differential and integral form, as described above). Two examples are Gauss's law (in electrostatics), which follows from the inverse-square Coulomb's law, and Gauss's law for gravity, which follows from the inverse-square Newton's law of universal gravitation. The ...
Electric field from positive to negative charges. Gauss's law describes the relationship between an electric field and electric charges: an electric field points away from positive charges and towards negative charges, and the net outflow of the electric field through a closed surface is proportional to the enclosed charge, including bound charge due to polarization of material.
If magnetic monopoles were to be discovered, then Gauss's law for magnetism would state the divergence of B would be proportional to the magnetic charge density ρ m, analogous to Gauss's law for electric field. For zero net magnetic charge density (ρ m = 0), the original form of Gauss's magnetism law is the result.
In three dimensions, the derivative has a special structure allowing the introduction of a cross product: = + = + from which it is easily seen that Gauss's law is the scalar part, the Ampère–Maxwell law is the vector part, Faraday's law is the pseudovector part, and Gauss's law for magnetism is the pseudoscalar part of the equation.
It is an arbitrary closed surface S = ∂V (the boundary of a 3-dimensional region V) used in conjunction with Gauss's law for the corresponding field (Gauss's law, Gauss's law for magnetism, or Gauss's law for gravity) by performing a surface integral, in order to calculate the total amount of the source quantity enclosed; e.g., amount of ...
While Gauss's law holds for all situations, it is most useful for "by hand" calculations when high degrees of symmetry exist in the electric field. Examples include spherical and cylindrical symmetry. The SI unit of electric flux is the volt-meter (V·m), or, equivalently, newton-meter squared per coulomb (N·m 2 ·C −1).