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2. Gauss’s Law
 
by Sanjay Pandey
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Gauss’s Law is physically equivalent to Coulomb’s Law.
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Gauss’s Law is an alternative description that is more convenient/easier to apply in situations of highsymmetry
.
 
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Gauss’s Law deals with a quantity known as
electric flux 
. To use Gauss’s Law requires understandinghow to calculate electric flux.
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Gauss’s Law permits drawing some sweeping, interesting, and technologically useful conclusionsabout charged conductors in external fields
 
Recall: Electric Field Lines
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Density of lines proportional to electric field strength/magnitude.
 
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Electric field direction tangent to lines.
 
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Lines leave/start at positive charges, enter/end at negative charges, number proportional tomagnitude of charge.
 
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Lines can never cross: only one line at any point, field has a unique direction.
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Flux of an electric field
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Electric flux is a quantitative way to make use of the behavior of electric field lines in a mannerconsistent with Coulomb’s Law.
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Loosely speaking, electric flux is the amount of “flow” of field lines through imaginary surfaces
.
 
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Another ‘picture’ of flux
Flux is the “amount of stuff” going through an area.

=
⃗
.
 ⃗
 The flux depends on the relative orientation of the “stuff going through” the area and the plane of thearea.
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