Coulomb's Law
1
8.7
- noun
- /ˈkuːlɒmz lɔː/
- Specialized
- According to Coulomb's law, the force between two electric charges is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
Examples
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The reason can be traced back to the famous experiments of Ernest Rutherford, who found that a fast electron interacts with electrons and nuclei of neutral matter as if they were all free particles; that is, according to Coulomb's law.
Academic text (2006) -
It's Coulomb's law.
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Coulomb's law is based on electrostatic forces, all right?
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According to Coulomb's law, the friction between the surfaces always opposes motion, it is proportional to the normal force between the surfaces, and it is independent of the area size in contact.
Academic text (2001) -
Using Coulomb's law, we can calculate the electric force between two charged particles based on their charges and distance.
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In physics, Coulomb's law describes how electrically charged objects interact with one another.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Coulomb's + law
The headword is a possessive proper name plus the generic noun 'law'; while 'law' signals a scientific principle, the surname 'Coulomb's' does not convey the specific content about electric charges and distance. The specific quantitative relation requires subject-matter knowledge rather than composition of the parts, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would not be able to derive the meaning.
Etymology
Coulomb's Law is named after the scientist Charles Coulomb, who measured how two small charged balls would 'pull or push' each other. He found that the 'force' grew with how large the charges were and fell quickly as the distance between the balls increased, so today the law tells us how charge and distance control the force.