Testing Coulomb's Law!

Thread Starter

vilyanur

Joined Jul 8, 2014
2
Hello all so as I can see in this website http://electronicspani.com/coulombs-law/

the formula for coulomb's law is:


So that means If I take two charges of one coulomb each and place them one meter apart in vacuum that will result in about 8.9875 * 10^9 Newton of force! isn't it? Isn't that too much of force?!? In real life I cannot see charges being attracted with that much of energy!
 

Thread Starter

vilyanur

Joined Jul 8, 2014
2
So s far as I know one coulomb charge is one ampere per second. So if I place two positive and negative wire with one ampere load in between the the wire does not seem to attract each other with such tremendous force!
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
So s far as I know one coulomb charge is one ampere per second. So if I place two positive and negative wire with one ampere load in between the the wire does not seem to attract each other with such tremendous force!
You have it backward. An ampere is one coulomb per second. But for the attraction to work and to use that formula the coulomb must be a free point charge with no opposite charge to cancel it. In a wire most of the negative electron charge of the free carriers is balanced by the positive protons in the atoms' nucleus so you see little electrostatic net force.
 

BR-549

Joined Sep 22, 2013
4,928
Hello. That force you state is the force between two charges. If the charges are equal....the force(whether attractive or repulsive) will be equally divided between the two charges. So one coulomb of charge is half that number of force. Now there is a device that we use to store charge. It's called a Leiden jar, a condenser and now a capacitor. If you study capacitors and capacitance, a capacitor of 1 farad is one coulomb of charge per volt. If you study how to safely charge and discharge capacitors.....you will see that just a fraction of one coulomb can be quite impressive. There is another device that can store current like the capacitor stores charge(voltage). It's called an inductor, it's impressive also. When you put these two together......it's magic.
 

alfacliff

Joined Dec 13, 2013
2,458
except that a capacitor can store a charge for an apreciable time, an inductor can not store current for very long. when the charging source is removed, it discharges its self thrugh its own resistance.
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
except that a capacitor can store a charge for an apreciable time, an inductor can not store current for very long. when the charging source is removed, it discharges its self thrugh its own resistance.
Unless, of course, it's a superconducting coil inductor. ;)
 
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