FROM SCRATCH SERIES || CHAPTER 2: विद्युत्वृत्त(The electric Chronicles) || Part 1: The unit mathematics of electricity - Coulomb's law

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 In chapter I, we experienced the origin story of it all. In this one, we are going to cover all the foundational concepts concerning electricity, magnetism and fusing the two- electromagnetism. This ride will comprise less rigor with regards to history on account of the necessity of covering the concepts which are increasingly complex hereon, in a short literary piece. 

Part 1: The unit mathematics of electricity - Coulomb's law  

The person that would come first in my list in this trail is none other than the person who first mathematized the charge: Charles-Augustin de Coulomb(1736 - 1806). 

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

Coulomb was a French military officer, engineer and physicist. He wrote a series of seven memoirs to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris where he formalized his law and derived it using his invention: The Torsion Balance. His memoirs were titled: 


See, Newton, till then has already established the relation between gravitational force and distance between the objects so the open question at the time, then, was the existence of such a relationship with regards to electric charges. Coulomb aimed to answer just that. He conducted several experiments with his torsion balance, which produces torsional force in a metal wire which would be proportional to the electrical force. In this first memoir titled this, he describes the usage and construction of his balance. 


All the text in these memoirs is in French. An illustration of this balance is provided at the end of the first memoir: 


He used two metal spheres as charges by charging them evenly. Throughout the series, he tabulates and plots graphically his observations. There are extensive repetitions of the experiments. Here's an observation sheet for reference. 


Here comes the graph which perfectly demonstrates his findings, I found it at the end of the third memoir: 


In essence, coulomb sought to find the 'n' in the equation: 

force ∝ 1/r^n

Which,  he experimentally found out as: n=2. Also, he found out that the force is proportional to the quantitié d'électricité (French: Quantity of electricity -> later shortened to q as a symbol for charge)-> 

force ∝ q1.q2 

No mention of the constant of proportionality are found in here. The time of these memoirs were around 1780s. 





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