Energy flux is the rate of transfer of energy through a surface. The quantity is defined in two different ways, depending on the context:
- Rate of energy transfer per unit area. (SI units: W·m−2 = J·m−2·s−1)
- This is a vector quantity, its components being determined in terms of the normal (perpendicular) direction to the surface of measurement.
- This is sometimes called energy flux density, to distinguish it from the second definition.
- Radiative flux, heat flux, and sound energy flux are specific cases of energy flux density.
- Total rate of energy transfer. (SI units: W = J·s−1)
- This is sometimes informally called energy current.
Read more about Energy Flux: See Also
Famous quotes containing the words energy and/or flux:
“I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)