Flux is a noun meaning change. It comes from the same root as the word ‘flow’.
Appropriately enough, what flux is changes depending on where you find the word.
In welding and metalworking? Flux is a chemical that makes it easier for other metals to stick to each other. This also applies to soldering, pottery (with ceramics instead of metal), and electrical work.
Flux is also used to describe the way invisible forces change and move. So it’s used in describing electron movement, photon movements, and radiation.
It’s also used in calculus and involved with vectors, but that’s a definition that I myself don’t understand the specifics. Just know that it is related to how numbers move in directions.
There’s also a number of products named flux, probably named after how useful and flexible they want to be seen as.
If you want to look at some of the details of these different uses, I was looking at the [wiki disambiguation page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_(disambiguation)) for some refreshers to my memory.
Flux is defined as the dot product of the vector field F with the Area vector of the surface, as FAcos(theta). You can intuitively visualize this as the vector field flow across the planar surface/fish screen. If theta == 0, you maximize the flow through the fish screen. If theta == 90, you minimize the flow through the fish screen so the flux is zero.
Now to generalize this across 3D surfaces, we take the surface integral of the flux, which is the double integral of the dot product of F with the normal vector across the parametrized 3D surface.
Latest Answers