Coulomb’s Law Essay

ABSTRACT Performing this experimentation will allow one to investigate the relationship quantitative relationship between the electrostatic force and the distance between charged objects. First a simply observation was made of the electrical forces on two pieces of tape taking note of their attraction and repulsion. This same phenomenon was observed in the experimentation of two charged spheres. Furthermore the we used this experimentation to determine the magnitude of the electrical force between charged objects through video analysis. Derived from our data we have resulted that the forced acting is dependent upon the distance for the forces to act at an exponential rate of .04microcoulombs. OBJECTIVE We will note coulombs law by observing examination of forces in static equilibrium to determine the magnitude of the electrical force between charged objects. PROCEDURE Using the Logger Pro we track the electrostatic force between two charged spheres and the magnitude generated by the repulsion. RESULTS Data was not signed but sent to Doctor Wijesinghe upon completion in lab with analysis of results found. Synopsis sent was agreed to by all lab members. DATA ANLYSIS From the data gather we seen that the force generated increases exponentially at rate of 0.04microcoulombs. The intial data was to dissect the distance the spheres moved due the forces acting upon them in by allowing X to be the hanging sphere and X2 to be the probing sphere in a distance field in of 1m. To calculate this value the following equations were used: Fe=Kq1xq2/r2 Abs(X)-Abs(X2)= CC Fe=mg sin∂ sin∂=x/l Fe=mgx/l DISCUSSION The force will be dependent upon the sizes of the charges, and their separation. In fact the force follows an inverse square law, and is very similar in form to Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. It is known as Coulomb’s law. The form is exactly the same as Newton’s law of universal gravitation; in particular, it is an inverse-square law. This force can be attractive or repulsive. The magnitude of the force can be calculated by this equation, and the direction should be obvious from the signs of the interacting charges. (Actually, if you include the signs of the charges in the equation, then whenever you get a negative answer for the force, there is an attraction, whereas a positive answer indicates repulsion).Although the law is formulated for point charges, it works equally well for spherically symmetric charge distributions. In the case of a sphere of charge, calculations are done assuming all the charge is at the centre of the sphere. In all realistic cases, the electric force between 2 charges objects absolutely dwarfs the gravitational force between them.