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Charles-Augustin de Coulomb: The Trailblazer of Electrical & Magnetic Theory
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About Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was born on June 14, 1736, in Angoulême, France, and passed away on August 23, 1806, in Paris. He never married nor had any children. His curiosity in science and engineering led him to the prestigious École Royale du Génie de Mézières, where he graduated as an engineer and later worked for several years in structural design and fortification.
Coulomb's strong inclination towards physics, however, steered his career away from engineering and towards his groundbreaking research in electrical and magnetic theory. His life was marked by a continuous commitment to the pursuit of scientific truth.
Coulomb's Discoveries
Coulomb is most renowned for his development of Coulomb's law, a fundamental principle of electrostatics. His law provides a quantitative description of the force between two static electric charges.
The discovery of Coulomb's law was not easy. His research required the invention of sensitive instruments, including the torsion balance, which allowed him to measure the tiny forces involved in electrical and magnetic interactions.
Coulomb's Key Achievements
Beyond Coulomb's law, his contributions to science and engineering were extensive. He developed important methods in the field of structural analysis, such as the theory of elasticity. Furthermore, his studies in friction and electricity and magnetism laid the groundwork for the future development of the theory of electromagnetism.
Coulomb's Formulas
Perhaps Coulomb's most enduring contribution to physics is Coulomb's law, which describes the force between two charges. The formula is:
Introduction to Coulomb's Law:
Where:
- F: the magnitude of the force between the charges
- k: Coulomb's constant
- q1, q2: the quantities of the charges
- r: the distance between the charges
Charles Augustin De Coulomb Tutorials and Calculators
The following tutorials and calculators are influenced by the work the great physicist Charles Augustin De Coulomb, each calculator contains a tutorial that explains Charles Augustin De Coulomb in the field