Coulomb's Law for Discrete Charge Distributions Lesson Plan

🔖 Topics

• Electric Force Distributions of Point Charges
• Review of Newton’s Laws as They Relate to Electric Force

🎯 Objectives

• Calculate the forces on distributions of point charges using Coulomb’s law
• Utilize superposition to calculate the net force from multiple point charges

📋 Sequence

• 🟣 Force between multiple point charges positioned at arbitrary points in the xy-plane
• 🟣 Force between point charges fixed on the corners of a square
• 🟣 Force between point charges fixed on the corners of an equilateral triangle
• 🟣 Net force on a point charge at the center of a square

🖥️ Animations, Simulations, Activities

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📝 Practice Problems

1. Two point charges, each with a charge of $+1.5mC$ are separated by a distance of $5.75m$. What is the magnitude of the electric force between the point charges? Do they attract or repel each other?

2. A point charge of $+15\mu C$ is located at the point (1 m, 2 m). Another point charge of $-15\mu C$ is located at the point (0 m, -5 m). What is the electric force acting on the negative point charge from the positive one?

3. A charge of $10\mu C$ is positioned at the origin while another charge of $-30\mu C$ is positioned at the point (5 cm, 0 cm). Where around the two points (if anywhere) is the net electric force on a positive point charge equal to zero?

✅ Partial Solutions

1. 612.48 N, Repel
2. 0.0405 N, $81.87^{\circ }$
3. (-6.83 cm, 0 cm)

📘 Connected Resources

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