A simple experiment to demonstrate Coulomb’s law P. H. Wiley and W. L. Stutzman Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Electrical Engineering, Blacksburg Virginia 24061 (Received 5 December 1977; acepted 17 May 1978) {A simple classroom demonstration for verifying the inverse square law nature of Coulomb's law is described. It involves simple equipment and can be performed in a few minutes. The ‘experiment proceeds by equally charging two pith balls on long strings, discharging one pith ball, and measuring the relative separation in each case. No charge, mass, or force ‘measurements are necessary. An accuracy of about 2% is typical for this experiment. INTRODUCTION Coulomb's law forms the starting point for most under- graduate courses in electromagnetics. As such, it is im- portant to obtain the “faith” of the students that the study of electromagnetics is tangible and not merely a series of abstractions. Since electrostatic forces are of the action- at-a-distance type, itis difficult for students to obtain a completely comfortable feeling about the subject during, their first exposure. This is to be contrasted with the study of mechanics for which visualization is rather direct. Fur- thermore, students have more day-to-day contact with the concepts of mechanics than with the ideas involved with electrostatics. Also, in many undergraduate curricula in electrical engineering and physics a laboratory course does, not accompany an electromagnetics course. For these rea~ sons, the authors have developed a series of classroom, demonstrations to illustrate the principles of electricity and, magnetism. Fundamental to this program is a demonstra- tion of Coulomb's law. ‘Coulomb's law for the force between two charges Qi and Oris Q102/4re0r. a) A demonstration of this law usually begins by charging ‘wo equal-weight pith balls which are suspended on light- weight strings. The force F, separation distance r, and charges Q; and Q2 must be measured or estimated. In ad- dition, the permittivity ¢ must be assumed. A direct dem- ‘onstration such as this is difficult to perform in a classroom, environment and usually is not attempted. However, the inverse square dependence is much more easily demon- strated and can serve to reenforce the students grasp of this important class of forces. In this paper, a simple experiment for verifying the inverse square dependence of Coulomb's, law is presented, It is believed to be an original ap- proach. THEORY OF THE EXPERIMENT ‘Two identical pith balls are suspended from long, light- weight, equal-length strings. First, suppose that each pith ball has unknown charge Q. The balls will, of course, repel and reach the steady-state condition shown in Fig. 1. The. electrostatic force F and weight W (due to gravity) are balanced by the tension components in the string, A simple force diagram for these tension components reveals that F. = Wan @) 1131 Am. J. Phys. 46(11), Nov. 1978, (0002-9505 78 /4611-1131500.50 From (1) we also have Fi, = Q2/4reor, @) since 01 = 2 = Q. ‘Now, if one pith ball is discharged and the two balls are touched together, the new total charge of Q will redistribute itself equally so that each ball has charge Q/2. The system will reach a new equilibrium. The new separation is r2, the new angle is cx, and the new force is F2. So we have in a similar fashion to the initial steady-state case, Fy = Wtanaz (4) and (O/2)?/4meor}. (3) ‘Taking the ratio of (2) to (4) and-equating to that of (3) to (5) gives Fy taney 1 (12)? FT tamer 45) @ If we could verify this equation from measurement, Cou- lomb’s law would be verified. The beauty of this formulation is that the absolute charge has been removed: only the rel- ative charge was used, ic. the charge was halved. Also, all constants were removed. If the angles a and a2 as well as distances rand r2 were measured, Eq. (6) could be verified. The angles are, however, rather difficult to measure, but an approximation will simplify the situation. For a very long string (J. >> 71/2), taney =inay «2 o and tana, i) Note that sine and tangent agree to 0.3% for an angle of 5°. Using (7) and (8) in (6) yields a 7A) equ = 1.se74 ° n or ‘Thus, by measuring only the separation between the balls in the two states, Coulomb's law can be verified by com- paring the results to (9). (© 1978 American Association of Physics Teachers 1131Figure 1 condition Initial steady stare po ‘A more instructive approach is to formulate Coulomb's Taw as F = QiQa/r*. (10) Students readily accept the linear dependence on the amount of charge for cach ball. They also accept the inverse with distance variation. It is the inverse square law de- pendence, that is not obvious. Using (10) in a derivation similar to above, we obtain ay wn Solving for x yields log Flog tnir) I Now, measurement of ri/rz together with (12) gives the power law variation of Coulomb's law. EXPERIMENT AND TYPICAL RESULTS: This experiment is easily performed under classroom conditions. Two pith balls which have conductive coatings are attached to very lightweight nylon threads about 1.5 m Jong. The threads are suspended from the center of the lens of an ordinary flashlight which is mounted about 2 m above the floor with the beam directed at the floor. The separation distance between the charged pith balls is difficult to measure directly since they are attracted to any measuring device which is brought near them. The purpose of the flashlight is to cast the shadows of the pith balls onto the floor. Since in (12) only the ratio ri/rz is needed, itis suf- ficient to measure the separation of the shadows; the ratio of shadow separations for the two charge conditions will equal the ratio ri/r2. This is easily done by having two students each mark the position of one of the shadows on a piece of white paper laid on the floor. Two students are needed since the pith balls usually have a slight motion due to air currents in the room and it is therefore necessary to ‘mark the position of each shadow simultaneously. Corre- sponding edges are more accurately marked than centers, For increased accuracy the positions can be marked several times and the average distance used. The experiment is begun by charging the pith balls with an electrostatic generator such as a Van de Graaf generator. 1132 Am.J. Phys, Vol. 46, No. 11, November 1978 Table I. Data Trial rifem)rafom) nin x error Po So 2 4390276158 199-08 383252558203 HS 4 52533113919 =0s Ss 8de 528 Sk 2031S Direct contact with the generator will transfer the greatest charge and produce the largest separation. After charging, the pith balls should be forced to come in contact with each other to guarantee that the charges are equal. This is ac- complished by grasping each string a few centimeters above the pith balls and swinging them together. They are then allowed to hang freely until they come to rest, and the shadow separation distance is marked. Next, one of the pith balls is discharged by touching with the hand and again should be brought into contact so that the remaining charge is divided equally between the two. After they have come to rest again, the final shadow separation distance is marked. Application of (12) then yields the exponent in Coulomb's law. Actual results of the experiment are shown in Table I. The pith balls were approximately 1 cm in diameter and were charged from a standard 300 000-V Van de Graaf, generator (Edmund Scientific Co. Catalog No. 70 264). Separation distances of about 3-8 em were obtained. ‘The major source of error in this demonstration is asso- ciated with obtaining the separation distance of the shadows accurately. With the light source 2 m away. the shadows are well defined, but, due to the slight motion of the pith balls, the position can be marked accurate to only about 0.3 mm. The distances r and r2 appearing in Table I were obtained by marking the positions at each separation 10 times and then computing the average distance. The re- sulting distances are accurate to about 0.1 mm since the ratio r1/r2 is within 0.01 of the correct value 1.5874 Another potential source of error is the fact that the distance between the actual centers of the charges is slightly greater than the distance between the centers of the pith balls. This effect would be more pronounced for smaller separations and would tend to make r2 proportionately larger than r). This should reduce the ratio ri/rz and cause the computed exponents to be consistently greater than 2 A small tendency toward this effect can be observed in the data (average x = 2.01). Other possible sources of error are the use of tan a in the place of sin a and the fact that the suspension point is about 2.em below the filament of the flashlight. However, these are negligible in comparison with the error sources previ- ously mentioned. Considering these sources of error, this demonstration provides an effective way to verify the inverse square de- pendence of Coulomb's law using simple equipment and under classroom conditions. As can be seen from Table I, results within 1%-2% of the theoretical value can be ob- tained if reasonable care is exercised. P. Wiley and W.Stutzman 1132