Objectives
- Students will explore the electric force between charged objects.
- Students will observe how the force depends upon the magnitude of the two charges and the distance separating them.
Vocabulary
- attract
- charge
- distance
- force
- magnitude
- Newton (used as a unit)
- ratio of forces
- repel
About the Lesson
In this lesson, students will explore Coulomb's law by manipulating the magnitude of two charges and the distance separating them.
As a result, students will:
- Observe that charges with like signs repel and charges with opposites signs attract.
- Relate the magnitude of the force the charges exert on each other to the product of the two charges and to the inverse square of the distance separating them.