Physicist and engineer — Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (Angoulême 1736 – Paris 1806) was a French physicist and military engineer. Trained as an engineer in the corps of engineers, he served for years in the colonies and in fortifications work, before turning to experimental research. His most famous contribution is the law that bears his name, describing the electrostatic force between point charges, which he measured with great precision using a torsion balance of his own devising. He also studied friction between surfaces, laying the foundations of modern tribology, and magnetism. In his honour the unit of electric charge in the International System is the coulomb.
Fun fact
To measure extremely weak electric forces he invented and used the torsion balance, an instrument so sensitive it could detect the twisting of a thin wire produced by the repulsion between two charges.
Theories and contributions
- Coulomb’s law — The force between two point charges is proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance: .
- Laws of friction — Sliding friction is proportional to the normal force and independent of the contact area: .
Featured in chapters
Linked atoms
21 linked atoms.
00a Come usare il libro
02 Forze e leggi di Newton
08 Gravitazione universale
13 Forza di Coulomb ed elettrostatica
- Electrostatic equilibrium
- Coulomb and Newton: two twins with an asymmetry
- Coulomb’s law
- Contact forces are electromagnetic
- From the torsion balance to Franklin’s lightning
- Principle of superposition
- Electrostatic potential energy
- Two conservation laws together
- The centre of mass ignores internal forces
14 Campo elettrico e potenziale
- Why invent the field?
- What is the electric field?
- Counting the lines: the field from the density
- Dielectrics and polarisation