Coulomb's Law

Coulomb’s Law states as follows: The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two point electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges:

where Q1 represents the quantity of charge on object 1 (in Coulombs), Q2 represents the quantity of charge on object 2 (in Coulombs), and d represents the distance of separation between the two objects (in meters). The symbol k is a proportionality constant known as the Coulomb's law constant. The value of this constant is dependent upon the medium that the charged objects are immersed in.

Coulomb's law was developed by French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb in the 1780s.