Flux

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.

Flux means 'flow'.

So it pops up meaning things like:

• something that flows
• something that keeps flow happening
• 'rate of flow' and/or 'amount of stuff happening' in a quantified way

The rate-of-flow meaning pops up in

• physics, e.g.
  • luminous flux is amount of visible light, radiant flux refers to any electromagnetism (verify) (see also flux in the human perception of light)
  • Electric flux is a property of an electric field
  • Magnetic flux

• biology (movement of chemicals, sometimes specific to metabolism)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_(biology)

• but also physiology and a few other places.

The keeps things flowing meaning pops up e.g. around

• In metallurgy (e.g. welding) flux is about cleaning and purifying agents to keep things flowing
  • in welding it might refer to anything that helps keep the weld pool clean - preventing things from stagnating
  • in soldering, soldering flux is often specifically an acid that removes oxidation -- so that solder can flow more easily

• acid flux refers to a specific type of such flux

(an Acid brush may well be used to distribute acid flux)

Flux also sounds vaguely cool, so it gets used in names.

• Flux capacitor

• Flux is a query language used by InfluxDB

See also:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_(disambiguation)