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Question c
Define the unit of charge, the coulomb. State Coulomb's law. Calculate the force of repulsion between two small spheres when they are held 8 cm apart in a vacuum. E... show full transcript
Step 1
Answer
The coulomb (C) is defined as the amount of electric charge that passes through a conductor when a current of 1 ampere (A) flows for 1 second. In simpler terms, 1 C is the quantity of electricity transported by a constant current of 1 A in 1 second.
Step 2
Answer
Coulomb's law states that the force of attraction or repulsion between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Mathematically, it can be expressed as:
where is the force between the charges, is Coulomb's constant (), and are the magnitudes of the charges, and is the distance between the charges.
Step 3
Answer
To calculate the force of repulsion, we will use Coulomb's law mentioned above.
Given:
Substituting these values into the formula:
Calculating:
Calculating the numerator:
Step 4
Answer
In the diagram, the electric field lines emanate from the positive charges. The region where the electric field strength is zero will be found along the line connecting the two charges. This point is exactly halfway between the two charges, where the fields from each charge cancel each other out. To illustrate this:
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