Coulomb's law, named after the French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, is a fundamental principle in electromagnetism that describes the interaction between electric charges. It quantifies the force experienced by two point charges due to their electric charges and the distance between them. Coulomb's law is expressed mathematically as:
=
β
1
β
2
2
F=kβ
r
2
q
1
β
β
q
2
β
β
Where:
F is the magnitude of the electrostatic force between the two charges.
k is Coulomb's constant, a proportionality constant that depends on the units used for charge and distance.
1
q
1
β
and
2
q
2
β
are the magnitudes of the charges.
r is the distance between the charges.
Key points about Coulomb's law:
The force is attractive if the charges are of opposite sign (one is positive and the other is negative), and repulsive if the charges are of the same sign (both positive or both negative).
The force is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of the charges.
The force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges. This means that the force decreases rapidly as the distance between the charges increases.
Coulomb's law is valid for point charges, which means that the charges are concentrated at a single point and the sizes of the charges are negligible compared to the distance between them.
Coulomb's law is a fundamental principle that plays a crucial role in understanding and analyzing the behavior of charged particles in various electrical systems, from simple point charge interactions to complex systems like circuits, conductors, and more.