Divergence — Study Resources & PYQs
Divergence and its physical significance.
- Estimated study time: 30 minutes
Study resources
- Divergence - Khan Academy article (Article) — Animated explanation of divergence as net outflow from a point. This intuition is exactly what makes div E = rho/epsilon and div B = 0 make sense.
- Physical Interpretation of grad, curl, div - University of Alberta (Article) — Explains solenoidal fields (zero divergence) and what a non-zero divergence physically represents.
- AskFilo - Del Operator, Gradient, Divergence, Curl (Solved Problems) (Article) — Explains the del/nabla operator and derives gradient, divergence and curl with solved examples (finding div/curl of a vector field).
- Medium - Gradient, Divergence, Curl: Electromagnetics (Part 1) (Article) — Clear conceptual article explaining the physical meaning of gradient, divergence and curl in the context of electromagnetics.
- Lehman College - Lecture 5: Vector Operators: Grad, Div and Curl (PDF) (Article) — University lecture notes (PDF) deriving grad, div, curl in Cartesian coordinates with worked examples.
- NPTEL EM Theory - Week 1 (Coulomb's law, divergence of E, Gauss's law) (Article) — Week 1 of the IIT Kanpur course builds electric flux and Gauss's law from Coulomb's law, and derives both the integral and differential forms. Watch this before attempting numericals.
- Partial derivatives, gradient, divergence, curl - Khan Academy (Video) — Sequential videos working through the actual computation of grad, div and curl. Watch these if you can state the definitions but cannot compute them quickly.
Divergence previous year questions
- (a) Explain what is meant by the divergence of a vector field $\vec{A}$. Derive expression for Div $\vec{A}$ in Cartesian co-ordinates. Discuss its physical si…
- a) State and prove Gauss-divergence theorem. b) Show that $\vec{\nabla} \frac{1}{|\vec{r}|} = -\frac{\vec{r}}{|\vec{r}|^3}$. c) Evaluate divergence of $\vec{A}…
- (a) Explain the terms: (i) The gradient of a scalar field (ii) The divergence of a vector field Discuss their physical significance by giving examples (b) Find…
Taught in these subjects
- APPLIED ENGINEERING PHYSICS — BPHT11 · Government College of Engineering and Technology, Jammu
- ADVANCED ENGINEERING PHYSICS — BPHT21 · Government College of Engineering and Technology, Jammu
- APPLIED ENGINEERING PHYSICS — BPHT11 · Government College of Engineering and Technology, Jammu
- Advanced Engineering Physics — BPHT21 · Government College of Engineering and Technology, Jammu
- Applied Engineering Physics — BST1103 · Government College of Engineering and Technology, Jammu
- Advanced Engineering Physics — BST1203 · Government College of Engineering and Technology, Jammu