Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Hewitt-Drew-it! PHYSICS 88 Coulomb's Law

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
Born on June 14, 1736, in Angoulême, France,
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb studied
engineering and plied his trade with the military
before winning accolades for his work in torsion
Charge: Symbol Unit balances. He offered pioneering theories in the
force found between electrical charges, as well
as magnetic attraction and repulsion. The unit
of measurement known as the coulomb is
Rule for using charge in the Physics 30 formulas: named in his honor. He died in Paris on August
23, 1806.

Part 1: Coulomb’s Torsion Balance:

Explain how Coulomb’s Torsion Balance was used to determine the force between two charged spheres:
Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Part 2: The Coulomb Experiment

Variables

Activity: The Physics Classroom Coulomb’s Law Interactive Manipulated

Google “Coulomb's Law Interactive - The Physics Classroom” to access the Coulomb’s
Law app. Draw the frame to be a larger size so your whole group can see it on the
screen. Responding
The app starts out with a positive and negative charge.
Controlled
QUESTION 1: What is the magnitude of each charge? Which charge is larger?

Move them closer together until you see force arrows.

QUESTION 2: Which way do the force arrows point and how do their sizes compare to each other? Is this result
expected? Is there a law of physics that explains/predicts this?

Move the charges around, changing the distance between them so they are closer together and further apart.
Gather data from at least 8 points and plot the force as a function of distance using the graph below. Note that
separation distance is the distance between the centres of the objects.

Distance (m) Force (N)

Use your graphing calculator or Desmos to plot each of the following graphs. Sketch the results below
Linear Quadratic Inverse Square

QUESTION 3: Which of the three graph types above looks the most like your graph of force as a function of distance?
Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Part 3: Coulomb’s Law

Coulomb’s Law is an inverse square law that describes the force between two point charges:

Example: What is the force on the +3.0 μC charge?

Try some more basic questions:

1. Point charge A (-6.2x10-6C) on the left is 0.20m from point charge B (3.1x10-6 C) on the right.
a) What is the force that B exerts on A?

b) What is the force that A exerts on B?

2. The force between two point charges is 4.6N.

a) If both of the charges doubles, what is the new force?
b) If the distance between the point charges doubled, what is the new force?
c) If the distance between the point charges triple and one charge is doubled, what is the new force?

Demo: Electric forces and gravitational forces

Example: Suppose you hung two pith balls from long insulating strings of length 10
cm. You then touched the pith balls with a charged Teflon rod, causing them both to
become equally charged. The pith balls are seen to repel each other and hang a
distance d = 2.5 cm apart. The mass of each pith ball is 0.50 g.
Determine the magnitude of the electric force on each ball and
calculate the charge.
Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Part 4: Curve Straightening

In a Coulomb-type experiment, students were investigating the relationship between the force of electrostatic repulsion
acting on two charged spheres and their separation distance The results of their investigations yielded the following
results.

1) Draw a graph of the results shown in the table.

2) From the shape of the graph, what is the relationship between the electrostatic force and the
separation distance between two charges?

3) Make a new table of values to obtain data to straighten the graph (Curve Straightening)

you can compare this to y = m*x (equation of a line) where Fe is your y,

(1/r2) is your x.

4) Draw a Graph of the data in your new table of values

5) Determine the slope of the graph

6) What does the slope of this graph represent?

7) If the charges of the two spheres are the same, what is the value of the charge on each sphere?
Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Part 5: Vectors and Vector Addition

Vectors Scalars

Vector notation:

Magnitude [angle] notation (Alberta high school):

Component notation (U of C first year):

Unit vector notation:

Example: Draw the force vector with a magnitude of 150 N at an angle of 30o north of east and write it in the three
different notations.

Example: A box is pushed along a road with a force of <13, -14> N. Convert this force vector into magnitude [angle]
notation.
Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Vector Operations:

Multiply by a scalar

Example: A 10 kg box is pushed with an acceleration of 15 m/s2 [12o N of W]. What is the force on the box?

Example: A car travels with a velocity of <15, -10> m/s for 15 s. What is the car’s displacement?

Add two vectors

Example: Add the force vectors F1 = 15 N [30o S of E] and F2 = 25 N [12o N of E]

Note: you are not able to add a vector to a scalar or multiply to vectors using high school vector algebra.

Part 6: Superposition of Electric Forces

The Principle of Superposition for Coulomb's Law of Electric Force | Doc Physics

The principle of superposition states that the interaction

between any two charges is unaffected by the presence of
others.

In other words, if there are multiple charges in an area and

you are interested in the total force on one of these charges,
let’s call it qo, you can calculate the force between qo and
each charge individually, ignoring the others, and then add
the forces together.
Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Example: Calculate the net force on charge 3

Example: What is the net force on charge 2?

Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Example: What is the force on charge 3?

Example: What is the force on charge 1?

Physics 30 Outcome 1 Lesson 2: Coulomb’s Law

Lesson 2 Practice Problems

1. In a hydrogen atom, an electron is 5.29 x 10-11 m from a proton. An electron has a charge of -1.60 x 10-19 C, and the
proton’s charge is +1.60 x 10-19 C. Calculate the electrostatic force of attraction acting on the two charges. [8.22 x 10-8 N
[attraction]]

2. The electric force between two charged objects is 5.2 x 10-4 N when the objects are 3.11 x 10-1 m apart. What is the
electric force between the same objects if the distance is changed to 4.04 x 10-1 m? (3.1 x 10-4 N)

3. Two small metallic spheres have the same mass and volume. One of the spheres has a charge of +4.00 μC and the
other a charge of -1.00 μC. If the two spheres are brought into brief contact with each other and are then separated to a
distance of 0.200 m, what is the electric force between them? (0.506 N)

4. Three charges are placed in a line, as shown in the diagram. DON’T DO. MISSING DIAGRAM
a) What is the net electrostatic force on charge A? [1.20 x 104 N [right]]
b) What is the net electrostatic force on charge B? [7.49 x 103 N [left]]

5. Calculate the net electrostatic force on charge B shown in the figure to the right. [2.54 x
102 N [225o]]

6. A metal sphere with a negative charge of 3.00 µC is placed 12.0 cm from another similar metal sphere with a
positive charge of 2.00 µC. The two spheres momentarily touch, and then return to their original positions.
Calculate the electrostatic force acting on the two metal spheres. [1.56 x 10-1 N [repulsion]]

7. A metal sphere with a charge of -2.50 x 10-9 C is 1.50 cm to the left of a second metal sphere with a charge of +1.50 x
10-9 C. A third metal sphere of -1.00 x 10-9 C is situated 2.00 cm to the right of the second charged sphere. If all three
charges form a line, determine the net electrostatic force on the second sphere. [1.16 x 10-4 N [left]]

8. Two point charged objects produce an electric force of 0.0620 N on each other. What is the electric force if the
distance between them increases three times and one of the
charges is doubled? (0.0138 N)

9. From the diagram to the right determine the net electrostatic

force on C. [16.8 N at 12.6o W of S]

10. In the diagram to the right, A has a charge of +0.30 μC, B has
a charge of -0.20 μC and C has a charge of -0.20 μC. What
is the net force on A? (0.093 N [S])