Repulsion of Charged Pith Balls
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Two equally charged pith balls of equal mass are separated by a distance , due to their mutual electrostatic repulsion. Each ball hangs on a string of length
from a common point, making an angle
with the horizontal. The value of the angle
, the charge
, and the tension
of the string are calculated.
Contributed by: Enrique Zeleny (March 2011)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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Details
By trigonometry, the angle is equal to , the value of the charge is
, and the tension is
, where
is the acceleration of gravity and
is the constant in Coulomb's law.
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