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 Quote by Keyser hey all, i've recently started studying electrostatics, and i have couple of question about things that i did not fully understand, and would very much appreciate if someone could set me straight. 1) how can a cube, with a single charge in the middle of it have a flux? don't the field lines cancel each other, thus achieving 0 electric field for each plane? i mean, you have a field vector going up on the Y axis, and down on the same axis (and so on for the others), so how come the flux $\Phi=A\overline{E}$ isn't zero? 2) if i have a flat disk on a plane, with uniform charge density $\sigma$, why when i integrate, i do so for small rings, and not for very small circles? why is it: $E=\int\frac{kσ2∏rdr}{(...)}$ instead of $E=\int\frac{kσ2∏dr}{(...)}$? thank you very much for your help
For your first question I would say that flux is a scalar and a unit outward normal is defined before calculating it.For example-if field line along +Y axis and normal is outward then flux is positive.For -Y ,normal is again outward(down in most preferred),so again it is positive because of two - signs.
For second one,you will have to cover the whole area of disk(for integration) and a circle does not have any thickness so you must have to select a ring.Also note that it should have the units of area which is only in the first case,not the second.