Lesson Plan: Coulomb’s Law
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to calculate the forces that electrically charged objects exert on each other, including the net force from multiple charges.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- relate the electric force, , on an object that has a charge of to the presence of another object that has a charge of when the objects are separated by a distance in the form of the equation , where is the Coulomb constant,
- recall that the equation is known as Coulomb’s law,
- recall that the value of the Coulomb constant is approximately N⋅m2/C2,
- apply Coulomb’s law in all combinations, including for systems of more than two particles.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- the inverse square law.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- descriptions of the resultant forces due to symmetrical distributions of electric charge.
