Like charges repel each other; unlike charges attract. Thus, two negative charges repel one another, while a positive charge attracts a negative charge. The attraction or repulsion acts along the line between the two charges. The size of the force varies inversely as the square of the distance between the two charges.
The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1299 792 458 of a second. The metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole
