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Electromagnetism: testing Coulomb’s law

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Electromagnetism: testing Coulomb’s law

This free course explores Coulomb’s law, the physical law that governs the force between electric charges, and shows how it can be verified experimentally. As a prerequisite you will need some mathematical knowledge of vectors.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course SM381 Electromagnetism.

Course learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

  • describe the properties of Coulomb's law and electrostatic force
  • determine the force exerted on one stationary charge by another using Coulomb's law
  • explain some of the uncertainties and errors that can occur in experimental measurements of electrostatic properties.

First Published: 25/04/2025

Updated: 25/04/2025

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