# What do curl/Dovergence of various fields represent?

1. Dec 15, 2008

### swraman

jsut wondering, is there any realistic OR theoretical significance to:

$$Div \stackrel{\rightarrow}{G}$$
$$Div \stackrel{\rightarrow}{E}$$
$$Div \stackrel{\rightarrow}{B}$$
$$Curl \stackrel{\rightarrow}{G}$$
$$Curl \stackrel{\rightarrow}{E}$$
$$Curl \stackrel{\rightarrow}{B}$$

where $$\stackrel{\rightarrow}{G}$$, $$\stackrel{\rightarrow}{E}$$ and $$\stackrel{\rightarrow}{B}$$ are a gravitational, electric, and magnetic field respectivley.

Thanks

2. Dec 15, 2008

### siddharth

Looks like a homework question. What do you think the answers are? You need to make an attempt.

3. Dec 15, 2008

### Andy Resnick

Loosely speaking, 'divergence' is a measure of the sources and sinks to a field. 'Curl' is a measure of the rotation.

4. Dec 15, 2008

### swraman

No, it is not a homework question. Im just studying for finals and I have calculus and physics left...so a lot of these kind of questions have been going through my head. We talked a little about it in math, something to do with the field being conservative (havent gotten that far in my studying yet).
And from physics gravitational and electrical fields are conservative...but I just dont know what the exact correlations between the 2 are and was wondering if there was one.

5. Dec 18, 2008

### swraman

i wish someone would've helped me with this, it showed up on the final I was studying for. =\

6. Dec 18, 2008

### cristo

Staff Emeritus
Homework/coursework style questions should be placed in the homework forums.

Next time post your question in the correct forum, and you are more likely to receive help. However, you must make an effort: we don't just answer such questions for students.