Need quick help with this question.

Is electric force directly proportional to 1/r or 1/r^2?

k Q1Q2/r^2

I was looking at coulombs law and I thought it was inversely proportional but my options are only 1/r or 1/r^2 and the question states directly proportional. I don't see how either answer could be correct. I could see how q1q2 is directly but not with the r's

To determine whether electric force is directly proportional to 1/r or 1/r^2, we can refer to Coulomb's Law, which gives the relationship between electric force and the distance between two charged objects.

Coulomb's Law states that the magnitude of electric force between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Mathematically, it can be expressed as:

F = k * (q1 * q2) / r^2

In this equation, F represents the magnitude of the electric force, k is the electrostatic constant (also known as Coulomb's constant), q1 and q2 are the charges of the two objects, and r is the distance between them.

Therefore, we can see that electric force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, meaning it is directly related to 1/r^2 rather than 1/r.