A thundercloud has an electric charge of 43.2 C near the top of the cloud and -38.7 C near the bottom of the cloud. The magnitude of the electric force between these two charges is 3.95 x 106 N. What is the average separation between these charges?
I'm confused, help pleeease? :)
Use Coulombs law
force=kQtop*Qbottom/d^2 solve for d
I used the formula, but I still don't know how to solve the problem ? Did you get it ?
Did anyone get the answer for this?
You have to convert km to m
To find the average separation between the charges, we can use Coulomb's Law, which states that the electric force between two charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The equation for Coulomb's Law is:
F = k * (q1 * q2) / r^2
where F is the electric force between the charges, k is the electrostatic constant, q1 and q2 are the magnitudes of the charges, and r is the distance between the charges.
In this problem, we are given the electric force F (3.95 x 10^6 N) and the magnitudes of the charges (43.2 C and -38.7 C). We need to find the average separation, which is the value of r.
First, let's rearrange Coulomb's Law to solve for r:
r^2 = k * (q1 * q2) / F
Now we can substitute the given values into the equation:
r^2 = (9 x 10^9 N m^2/C^2) * (43.2 C * (-38.7 C)) / (3.95 x 10^6 N)
Simplifying the calculation:
r^2 = (9 x 10^9 N m^2/C^2) * (-1669.44 C^2) / (3.95 x 10^6 N)
r^2 = -7.658 x 10^3 m^2
Since distance cannot be negative, we can take the absolute value:
r = √(7.658 x 10^3 m^2)
Using a calculator, we find:
r ≈ 87.59 m
Therefore, the average separation between the charges is approximately 87.59 meters.