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Coulomb's inverse-square law, or simply Coulomb's law, is an experimental law [1] of physics that calculates the amount of force between two electrically charged particles at rest. This electric force is conventionally called the electrostatic force or Coulomb force . [ 2 ]
Coulomb also experimentally determined the law that explains how "two bodies electrified of the same kind of Electricity exert on each other." On page 574 he states: Il résulte donc de ces trois essais, que l'action répulsive que les deux balles électrifées de la même nature d'électricité exercent l'une sur l'autre, suit la raison ...
These include the Boltzmann constant, which gives the correspondence of the dimension temperature to the dimension of energy per degree of freedom, and the Avogadro constant, which gives the correspondence of the dimension of amount of substance with the dimension of count of entities (the latter formally regarded in the SI as being dimensionless).
Around 1784 C. A. Coulomb devised the torsion balance, discovering what is now known as Coulomb's law: the force exerted between two small electrified bodies varies inversely as the square of the distance, not as Aepinus in his theory of electricity had assumed, merely inversely as the distance. According to the theory advanced by Cavendish ...
Analogously, Coulomb's law is the fundamental law that describes the force that charged objects exert on one another. It is given by the formula = where F is the force, k e is the Coulomb constant, q 1 and q 2 are the magnitudes of the two charges, and r 2 is the square of the distance between them. It describes the fact that like charges repel ...
The modern convention is to measure charge in coulombs, distance in meters, force in newtons, and energy in joules. Using coulombs requires using the Coulomb constant (k) in the equation. Rutherford used b as the turning point distance (called r min above) and R is the radius of the atom. The first term is the Coulomb repulsion used above.
A physical constant, sometimes fundamental physical constant or universal constant, is a physical quantity that cannot be explained by a theory and therefore must be measured experimentally. It is distinct from a mathematical constant , which has a fixed numerical value, but does not directly involve any physical measurement.
Similarly, the Newtonian gravitation law is a low-mass approximation of general relativity, and Coulomb's law is an approximation to quantum electrodynamics at large distances (compared to the range of weak interactions). In such cases it is common to use the simpler, approximate versions of the laws, instead of the more accurate general laws.