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Gauss's law for magnetism: magnetic field lines never begin nor end but form loops or extend to infinity as shown here with the magnetic field due to a ring of current. Gauss's law for magnetism states that electric charges have no magnetic analogues, called magnetic monopoles; no north or south magnetic poles exist in isolation. [3]
Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, magnetism is one of two aspects of electromagnetism .
The name "Gauss's law for magnetism" [1] is not universally used. The law is also called "Absence of free magnetic poles". [2] It is also referred to as the "transversality requirement" [3] because for plane waves it requires that the polarization be transverse to the direction of propagation.
The law was first [1] formulated by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1773, [2] followed by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1835, [3] both in the context of the attraction of ellipsoids. It is one of Maxwell's equations, which forms the basis of classical electrodynamics. [note 1] Gauss's law can be used to derive Coulomb's law, [4] and vice versa.
The second of Maxwell's equations is known as Gauss's law for magnetism and, similarly to the first Gauss's law, it describes flux, but instead of electric flux, it describes magnetic flux. According to Gauss's law for magnetism, the flow of magnetic field through a closed surface is always zero.
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.
Continuous charge distribution. The volume charge density ρ is the amount of charge per unit volume (cube), surface charge density σ is amount per unit surface area (circle) with outward unit normal nĚ‚, d is the dipole moment between two point charges, the volume density of these is the polarization density P.
Formulas for physical laws of electromagnetism (such as Maxwell's equations) need to be adjusted depending on what system of units one uses. This is because there is no one-to-one correspondence between electromagnetic units in SI and those in CGS, as is the case for mechanical units.