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  • Electric Field Flux
Topics:  Electric field, electric field flux, Maxwell's equations, Gauss' law.

Pre-requisite skills: Knowledge of Gauss' law.  Understanding of a surface integral helpful.

Approximate completion time:  Half hour.

Provide sufficient detail to verify that the assignment was completed in a meaningful manner.

Applet by Wolfgang Christian
1.  This applet shows the electric field due to a point charge located at the center of the applet.  The user can view the strength of the field and the coordinates at any location (see Applet Help).

(a)   By using the mouse to find the radial distance to the inner spherical cross-section.

(b)  Using this radial distance, calculate the flux using the surface integral

FluxDefinition.gif (1850 bytes).

(c)  From Gauss' law,

GaussLaw.gif (2055 bytes)

what is the magnitude of the charge creating the electric field?

2.   Now let us examine the flux defined for the second radial distance.   Using the same steps as in Question 1, calculate the flux for this new radial distance.

3.  Using your previous answers, can you state what the flux for the third radial distance should be?  Explain.

Helpful Resources

  1. Electric Charges, Fields, and Potentials by Ian Littlewood.
  2. Book of Phyz - Electric Fields by Dean Baird.
  3. The Physics Hypertextbook by Glenn Elert (see Electric Field )
  4. Physics E-Book - Projectile Motion by Fred Gram (formerly, Zogrseb, of the planet Ktoobirzp).
  5. Book of Phyz - Motion by Dean Baird
  6. P10D - Electricity and Magnetism by Janak Sodha

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