Looking for Gauss's Law?
Each of these forms can also be expressed two ways: In terms of a relation between the electric field E and the total electric charge, or in terms of the electric displacement field D and the free electric charge. (The former is given in sections 1 and 2, the latter in Section 3.) Gauss's law has a close mathematical similarity with a number of laws in other areas of physics. See, for example, Gauss's law for magnetism and Gauss's law for gravity. In fact, any "inverse-square law" can be formulated in a way similar to Gauss's law: For example, Gauss's law itself is essentially equivalent to the inverse-square Coulomb's law, and Gauss's law for gravity is essentially equivalent to the inverse-square Newton's law of gravity. See the article Divergence theorem for more detail.
Then, if the total flux is known, the field itself can be deduced at every point. Common examples of symmetries which lend themselves to Gauss's law include cylindrical symmetry, planar symmetry, and spherical symmetry. See the article Gaussian surface for examples where these symmetries are exploited to compute electric fields.
The result is that the more "fundamental" Gauss's law, in terms of E , is sometimes put into the equivalent form below, which is in terms of D and the free charge only. For a detailed definition of free charge and bound charge, and the proof that the two formulations are equivalent, see the "proof" section below.
In fact, Gauss's law does hold for moving charges, and in this respect Gauss's law is more general than Coulomb's law.
Source: Wikipedia > Gauss's Law
What is QuickyWiki? QuickyWiki blends the depth of Wikipedia with the ease and speed of Cliffs Notes.