The magnetic Reynolds number has a similar form to both the Péclet number and the Reynolds number. All three can be regarded as giving the ratio of advective to diffusive effects for a particular physical field and have the form of the product of a velocity and a length divided by a diffusivity. While the magnetic Reynolds number is related to the magnetic field in an magnetohydrodynamic flow, the Reynolds number is related to the fluid velocity itself and the Péclet number is related to heat. The dimensionless groups arise in the non-dimensionalization of the respective governing equations: the induction equation, the Navier–Stokes equations, and the heat equation.