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By 1785 Charles-Augustin de Coulomb showed that two electric charges at rest experience a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, a result now called Coulomb's law. The striking similarity to gravity strengthened the case for action at a distance, at least as a mathematical model. [12]
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's law states that: [5] The magnitude of the electrostatic force of attraction or repulsion between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The force is along the straight line joining them.
Coulomb explained the laws of attraction and repulsion between electric charges and magnetic poles, although he did not find any relationship between the two phenomena. He thought that the attraction and repulsion were due to different kinds of fluids. Coulomb also made a significant contribution to the field of tribology. [12]
The force of attraction or repulsion between two electrically charged particles, in addition to being directly proportional to the product of the electric charges, is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them; this is known as Coulomb's law. The deviation of the exponent from 2 is less than one part in 10 15. [8]
The SI unit of quantity of electric charge is the coulomb (symbol: C). The coulomb is defined as the quantity of charge that passes through the cross section of an electrical conductor carrying one ampere for one second. [6] This unit was proposed in 1946 and ratified in 1948. [6] The lowercase symbol q is often used to denote a quantity of ...
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 ...
A theory of electromagnetism, known as classical electromagnetism, was developed by several physicists during the period between 1820 and 1873, when James Clerk Maxwell's treatise was published, which unified previous developments into a single theory, proposing that light was an electromagnetic wave propagating in the luminiferous ether. [26]