Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Happens To Be A Uniform Ellipsoid: Chapter 16 Gauss' Law
Happens To Be A Uniform Ellipsoid: Chapter 16 Gauss' Law
1
by that surface.
16.1 Flux of an Electric Field
1. To determine the flux of an
electric field, consider figure (a),
which shows an arbitrary
Gaussian surface immersed in a
non-uniform electric field. Let us
divide the surface into small
squares of area A , each square
being small enough to permit us to neglect any curvature and
consider the individual square to be flat. We represent each
such element of area with an area vector A , whose
magnitude is the area A . Each vector A is perpendicular to
the Gaussian surface and directed away from the interior of the
surface.
2. Because the squares have been taken to be arbitrarily small,
the electric field E may be taken as constant over any given
square. The vectors A and E for each square then make
some angle with each other. A provisional definition for the
flux of the electric field for the Gaussian surface of above
figure is E A . This equation instructs us to visit each
square on the Gaussian surface, to evaluate the scalar product
2
E A for the two vectors E and A that we find there, and
to sum the results algebraically for all the squares that make
up the surface.
3. The exact definition of the flux of the electric field through a
closed surface is found by allowing the area of the squares
shown in above figure (a) to become smaller and smaller,
approaching a differential limit dA. The area vectors then
approach a differential limit dA . The sum of the above
equation then becomes an integral and we have, for the
definition of electric flux, E dA . The circle on the
3
electric flux through a Gaussian surface is proportional to
the net number of electric field lines passing through that
surface.
4
field resulting from all charges, both those inside and those
outside the Gaussian surface.
4. See right figure.
5
outside the conductors surface must be perpendicular to that
surface, and its magnitude is E
0 , in which is the charge
per unit area. It means the magnitude of the electric field at a
location just outside a conductor is proportional to the surface
charge density at that location on the conductor. If the charge
on the conductor is positive, the electric field points away
from the conductor; it points toward the conductor if the
charge is negative.
6
The magnitude of the electric field is E , and its direction
2 0