Two equal charges are placed at a separation of 1.0 m. What should be the magnitude of the charges so that the force between them equals the weight of a 50 kg person?
Given:
Mass of the person
Weight of the person,
Let the magnitude of charge on both be q.
Here,
Distance of separation,
________________________________________________
Formula used:
By Coulomb’s law, the electric force is given by:
Where ϵ0 is the permittivity of free space
k is the electrostatic constant
q1 and q2 are the magnitude of charges
r is the distance of separation between the charges
__________________________________________________
Rearranging, we get
Substituting the corresponding values, we get