Week 6: Flux, Flux of an Electric Field, Gauss' Law, Gauss' Law and Coulomb's Law, A Charged Isolated Conductor, Check points, Questions

In this class we look at a new way of calculating electric fields – Gauss's law. Not only is Gauss's law (the first of four Maxwell’s Equations) an exceptional tool for calculating the field from symmetric sources, it also gives insight into why E-fields have the r-dependence that they do.
The idea behind Gauss’s law is that, pictorially, electric fields flow out of and into charges. If you surround some region of space with a closed surface (think bag), then observing how much field “flows” into or out of that surface tells you how much charge is enclosed by the bag. For example, if you surround a positive charge with a surface then you will see a net flow outwards, whereas if you surround a negative charge with a surface you will see a net flow inwards.

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gauss-law.pdf (0.71 MB )

gauss-law-check-points.pdf (0.69 MB )