page_title: Introduction to electromagnetism
section_title: Electric flux
hierarchical_section_title: Introduction to electromagnetism / Electric field / Electric flux
context_page_description: Electromagnetism is one of the fundamental forces of nature. Early on, electricity and magnetism were studied separately and regarded as separate phenomena. Hans Christian Ørsted discovered that the two were related – electric currents give rise to magnetism. Michael Faraday discovered the converse, that magnetism could induce electric currents, and James Clerk Maxwell put the whole thing together in a unified theory of electromagnetism. Maxwell's equations further indicated that electromagnetic waves existed, and the experiments of Heinrich Hertz confirmed this, making radio possible. Maxwell also postulated, correctly, that light was a form of electromagnetic wave, thus making all of optics a branch of electromagnetism. Radio waves differ from light only in that the wavelength of the former is much longer than the latter. Albert Einstein showed that the magnetic field arises through the relativistic motion of the electric field and thus magnetism is merely a side effect of electricity. The modern theoretical treatment of electromagnetism is as a quantum field in quantum electrodynamics.
context_section_description: Flux can be thought of as the flow of the electric or magnetic field through a surface. Fields can be represented by flux lines. Flux is analogous to the flow of a fluid through a surface since the angle of the surface to the direction of flow determines how much fluid can flow through the surface. Gauss' law states that the flux through a closed surface is proportional to the amount of charge enclosed. The SI units of flux are newton meters-squared per coulomb (), or equivalently, volt-meters (V m).
caption: Flux is dependent on the angle between the field lines and the surface through which they pass.
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