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A continuity equation is the mathematical way to express this kind of statement. For example, the continuity equation for electric charge states that the amount of electric charge in any volume of space can only change by the amount of electric current flowing into or out of that volume through its boundaries.
In physics a conserved current is a current, , that satisfies the continuity equation =.The continuity equation represents a conservation law, hence the name. Indeed, integrating the continuity equation over a volume , large enough to have no net currents through its surface, leads to the conservation law =, where = is the conserved quantity.
In continuum mechanics, the most general form of an exact conservation law is given by a continuity equation. For example, conservation of electric charge q is = where ∇⋅ is the divergence operator, ρ is the density of q (amount per unit volume), j is the flux of q (amount crossing a unit area in unit time), and t is time.
The law can be formulated mathematically in the fields of fluid mechanics and continuum mechanics, where the conservation of mass is usually expressed using the continuity equation, given in differential form as + =, where is the density (mass per unit volume), is the time, is the divergence, and is the flow velocity field.
In physics, a vector field (,,) is a function that returns a vector and is defined for each point (with coordinates ,,) in a region of space. The idea of sources and sinks applies to if it follows a continuity equation of the form
The conservation of mass is expressed locally by the fact that the flow of mass density satisfies the continuity equation: + =, where is the mass flux vector. The formulation of energy conservation is generally not in the form of a continuity equation because it includes contributions both from the macroscopic mechanical energy of the fluid flow and of the microscopic internal energy.
The definition of probability current and Schrödinger's equation can be used to derive the continuity equation, which has exactly the same forms as those for hydrodynamics and electromagnetism. [6] For some wave function Ψ, let:
In the analysis of a flow, it is often desirable to reduce the number of equations and/or the number of variables. The incompressible Navier–Stokes equation with mass continuity (four equations in four unknowns) can be reduced to a single equation with a single dependent variable in 2D, or one vector equation in 3D.