If two identical charges are placed 1 meter apart, what happens to the force between them if the distance is doubled?
Practice Questions
1 question
Q1
If two identical charges are placed 1 meter apart, what happens to the force between them if the distance is doubled?
It doubles
It halves
It remains the same
It quadruples
According to Coulomb's law, force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. If the distance is doubled, the force becomes one-fourth.
Questions & Step-by-step Solutions
1 item
Q
Q: If two identical charges are placed 1 meter apart, what happens to the force between them if the distance is doubled?
Solution: According to Coulomb's law, force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. If the distance is doubled, the force becomes one-fourth.
Steps: 5
Step 1: Understand that we have two identical charges placed 1 meter apart.
Step 2: Recall Coulomb's law, which states that the force between two charges is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Step 3: If the distance is doubled from 1 meter to 2 meters, we need to calculate the new force.
Step 4: Since the distance is doubled, we square the new distance: (2 meters)² = 4.
Step 5: The force is now 1 divided by 4 (the square of the new distance), which means the force is reduced to one-fourth of the original force.
