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Chemistry Stoody Guide

Coulomb's Law

  1. Reason qualitatively about the strength of the electrostatic force between charged and/or neutral objects.

Coulomb’s Law

Coulomb’s Law describes the electrostatic force between two charged objects. The force is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges. The equation is:

Other Important Notes

  • Neutral objects are attracted to charged objects since each neutral object has an equal amount of positive and negative charges. When a charged object attracts a neutral object, the same charges as the object are repelled while opposite charges move closer. Although the distance moved is slight, it is enough to cause an attraction. (known as induction).

  • An object is probably neutral if it does not get repelled by itself, but gets attracted by objects of either charge. For instance, the top tape repelled the top tape, indicating it had a charge, however the paper did not repel itself, but was attracted by charged objects.