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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 .
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.
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:
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 ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 8 January 2025. German mathematician, astronomer, geodesist, and physicist (1777–1855) "Gauss" redirects here. For other uses, see Gauss (disambiguation). Carl Friedrich Gauss Portrait by Christian Albrecht Jensen, 1840 (copy from Gottlieb Biermann, 1887) Born Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-04-30 ...
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.
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.