Electrostatics and Coulomb's Law

Electrostatics

Coulomb's Law

• Coulomb's law describes the electrostatic force between two point charges.
• The magnitude of the electrostatic force is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
• Mathematically, Fe \propto \frac{q1 q_2}{r^2}, where:
  • F_e is the electrostatic force.
  • q1 and q2 are the magnitudes of the two point charges.
  • r is the distance between the charges.
• The equation for Coulomb's law is: F = K \frac{q1 q2}{r^2}
  • K is the Coulomb's constant, where K = \frac{1}{4 \pi \epsilon_0}
  • \epsilon0 is the permittivity of free space, and \epsilon0 = 8.85 \times 10^{-12} C^2/N \cdot m^2
  • K = 9.0 \times 10^9 N \cdot m^2/C^2