biots

Biots is not a standalone concept but a term that most often appears as the plural form of the surname Biot or as part of eponymous names linked to Jean-Baptiste Biot, a French scientist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The surname is associated with several notable contributions in physics and mathematics, most prominently through two widely recognized terms: the Biot–Savart law and the Biot number.

The Biot–Savart law, named for Jean-Baptiste Biot and Félix Savart, describes the magnetic field produced by electric currents and is a foundational principle in magnetostatics. The Biot number, named after Biot, is a dimensionless quantity used in heat transfer analysis. It compares internal conductive resistance within a body to external convective resistance at its surface, helping determine whether a lumped-capacitance approximation is appropriate for transient conduction problems.

Beyond these eponymous concepts, the Biot surname appears in historical and biographical contexts referring to various individuals who contributed to science and mathematics in France during the 18th and 19th centuries. In contemporary writing, “Biots” is typically encountered as the plural of the surname or in discussions of the related laws and quantities rather than as a distinct technical term.