Question

As a laudably skeptical physics student, you want to test Coulomb's law. For this purpose, you set up a measurement in which a proton and an electron are situated 933 933 nm from each other and you study the forces that the particles exert on each other. As expected, the predictions of Coulomb's law are well confirmed.

Answer 1

Explanation:

The Coulomb's law states that the magnitude of each of the electric forces between two point-at-rest charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitude of both charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance that separates them:

$F=\frac{kq_1q_2}{d^2}$

In this case we have an electron (-e) and a proton (e), so:

$F=-\frac{ke^2}{d^2}\\F=-\frac{8.99*10^9\frac{N\cdot m^2}{s^2}(1.6*10^{-19}C)^2}{(933*10^{-9}m)^2}\\F=-2.64*10^{-16}N$

In this case, the electric force is negative, therefore, the force is repulsive and its magnitude is:

$F=2.64*10^{-16}N$