PHYS 101 Lecture 32: Chapter 8-1
Document Summary
We review some of the properties of electrical charges that we have seen weeks ago, when discussing the atom: [1] charges (cid:272)o(cid:373)e i(cid:374) t(cid:449)o (cid:862)fla(cid:448)ors(cid:863): positi(cid:448)e a(cid:374)d (cid:374)egati(cid:448)e. [3] charge is discrete (quantized): comes in increments of the amount of charge on the electron, e. This force was first explored by a french physicist called charles. He discovered that the force between point charges (i. e. , charges that can be considered as points because they are macroscopically small) has the following characteristics: The force between electrical charges is directed along the line that goes from one charge to the other. The force is proportional to the product of the magnitude (i. e. the amount) of the charges. The force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges. Now, some of these characteristics should remind you of something else we saw before.