Gauss's law describes the relationship between an electric field and the electric charges that cause it: The electric field points away from positive charges and towards negative charges. In the field line description, electric field lines begin only at positive electric charges and end only at negative electric charges. 'Counting' the number of field lines in a closed surface, therefore, yields the total charge enclosed by that surface. More technically, it relates the electric flux through any hypothetical closed "Gaussian surface" to the enclosed electric charge.
Read more about this topic: Maxwell's Equations, Conceptual Description
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