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Atomic Structure

Coulomb’s Law

Figure 3. Charles Coulomb

Charles Augustin Coulomb was a scientist after whom the unit of charge was named. Coulomb’s Law states:

   A force exists between two point-source charges that is directly proportional to the product of the two charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.

A coulomb is the unit of charge, symbolized by C. One coulomb is the total charge carried by 6.25 X 1018 electrons.

 

A formula to calculate the coulombs of charge for a certain number of electrons is shown below:

Q=Numberofelectrons6.25X1018C

Example

How many coulombs of charge do 65.5 X 1031 electrons have?

Q=65.5X1031electrons6.25X1018C=104.8X1012C

 

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Basic Electricity Copyright © 2019 by Chad Flinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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