Coulomb's law


nounElectricity.
  1. the principle that the force between two point charges acts in the direction of the line between them and is directly proportional to the product of their electric charges divided by the square of the distance between them.

Origin of Coulomb's law

1
First recorded in 1850–55; after Coulomb

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

British Dictionary definitions for Coulomb's law

Coulomb's law

noun
  1. the principle that the force of attraction or repulsion between two point electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. A similar law holds for particles with mass

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for Coulomb's law

Coulomb's law

  1. A law stating that the strength of the force exerted by one point charge on another depends on the strength of the charges and on the distance between them. Since Coulomb's law is an inverse square law, higher charges entail stronger force, while greater distances entail weaker force. The force is understood as arising from the electric field that surrounds the charges. The force is repulsive if the charges have the same sign, and attractive if they have opposite sign.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.