Which of the following laws is applicable to the force of attraction or repulsion between two point charges?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is option 3. Coulomb's Law.
The law applicable to the force of attraction or repulsion between two point charges is Coulomb's Law.
Coulomb's Law describes the electrostatic force between two charged objects.
It states that the force 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 their centers.
Mathematically, Coulomb's Law is expressed as \( F = k \frac{q_1q_2}{r^2} \), where:
\( F \) is the electrostatic force,
\( k \) is Coulomb's constant,
\( q_1 \) and \( q_2 \) are the magnitudes of the charges,
\( r \) is the distance between the charges.
Coulomb's Law is analogous to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, which describes the gravitational force between two masses, but it applies to electric charges instead of masses.