\section{Electrostatics: Charge, Field, Flux}

This unit develops the core ideas of electrostatics by starting with charge as a conserved quantity and then building the interaction model for stationary charges. In AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, the emphasis is on careful charge bookkeeping, Coulomb's law, superposition, and the interpretation of the electric field vector $\vec{E}$ as a map of the force per unit charge that space assigns to a test charge.

From there, the unit extends point-charge reasoning to standard continuous charge distributions, then introduces electric flux as a measure of how much electric field passes through a surface. That flux viewpoint leads naturally to Gauss's law, especially for highly symmetric charge distributions and Gaussian surfaces that make the field easy to determine.

\input{concepts/em/u8/e8-1-charge-conservation.tex}

\input{concepts/em/u8/e8-2-coulomb-superposition.tex}

\input{concepts/em/u8/e8-3-electric-field.tex}

\input{concepts/em/u8/e8-4-continuous-distributions.tex}

\input{concepts/em/u8/e8-5-electric-flux.tex}

\input{concepts/em/u8/e8-6-gauss-law.tex}