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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's law is thus consistent with Newton's third law. [74] Electromagnetism treats forces as produced by fields acting upon charges. The Lorentz force law provides an expression for the force upon a charged body that can be plugged into Newton's second law in order to calculate its acceleration.
Coulomb's law and Newton's law of universal gravitation are based on action at a distance. Historically, action at a distance was the earliest scientific model for gravity and electricity and it continues to be useful in many practical cases. In the 19th and 20th centuries, field models arose to explain these phenomena with more precision.
The electric field was based on using a hypothetical "test charge" anywhere in space and then using Coulomb's Law to determine the electrostatic force. [ 38 ] : 4-6–4-8 Thus the electric field anywhere in space is defined as E = F q , {\displaystyle \mathbf {E} ={\mathbf {F} \over {q}},} where q {\displaystyle q} is the magnitude of the ...
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 electric field of a single charge (or group of charges) describes their capacity to exert such forces on another charged object. These forces are described by Coulomb's law, which says that the greater the magnitude of the charges, the greater the force, and the greater the distance between them, the weaker the force. Thus, we may ...
Using Coulomb's law, it is known that the electrostatic force F and the electric field E created by a discrete point charge Q are radially directed from Q. By the definition of the position vector r and the displacement vector s, it follows that r and s are also radially directed from Q. So, E and ds must be parallel: = | | | | = Using ...
Macroscopic charged objects are described in terms of Coulomb's law for electricity and Ampère's force law for magnetism; the Lorentz force describes microscopic charged particles. The electromagnetic force is responsible for many of the chemical and physical phenomena observed in daily life.