Hi everyone,

I'm on a train using my phone, so apologies if this seems blunt.

I'm looking at Coulombs law, but I don't understand part of it when the denominator is r squared.

The r on the numerator has a squiggle above, which I do not understand.

Similar to the r in the vector form equation here;
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb's_law#section_1

Thanks,

Sparky

 

Hi everyone,

I'm on a train using my phone, so apologies if this seems blunt.

I'm looking at Coulombs law, but I don't understand part of it when the denominator is r squared.

The r on the numerator has a squiggle above, which I do not understand.

Similar to the r in the vector form equation here;
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb's_law#section_1

Thanks,

Sparky

Well, I think you pretty much answered your own question about the R with the "squiggle". It's actually called a circumflex, and it denotes a unit vector. People would often read it as R(hat) or R-hat. It is the same as r-r1.

The d^2 in the denominator means that charge is inversely proportional to the distance squared.

 

Thanks. V ety much. Gtov go losing signAL lol.