Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 .
Gauss's law for gravity is often more convenient to work from than Newton's law. [1] The form of Gauss's law for gravity is mathematically similar to Gauss's law for electrostatics, one of Maxwell's equations. Gauss's law for gravity has the same mathematical relation to Newton's law that Gauss's law for electrostatics bears to Coulomb's law.
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 ...
Gauss's law for electricity; Gauss's law for gravity; Gauss's law for magnetism; Gibbs–Helmholtz equation; Gross–Pitaevskii equation; Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation; Helmholtz equation; Karplus equation; Kepler's equation; Kepler's laws of planetary motion; Kirchhoff's diffraction formula; Klein–Gordon equation; Korteweg–de Vries ...
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.
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.
Gauss's law for magnetism, which is one of the four Maxwell's equations, states that the total magnetic flux through a closed surface is equal to zero. (A "closed surface" is a surface that completely encloses a volume(s) with no holes.) This law is a consequence of the empirical observation that magnetic monopoles have never been found.
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).