Friday 19 June 2020

electromagnetism - Why does the density of electric field lines make sense, if there is a field line through every point?


When we're dealing with problems in electrostatics (especially when we use Gauss' law) we often refer to the density of electric field lines, which is inversely proportional to the radius in the case of a single point charge (all field lines are directed radially).


My question may sound dumb, despite the fact that this concept is quite intuitive, but if you think about it there is actually an infinite amount of field lines which we can draw everywhere (one through every point), so speaking of an area where field lines are more "dense" or "sparse" doesn't make much sense to me.


With this in mind, why can we still use such a concept? Why does it really work?




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