Lab 1: Coulomb's law

READ THIS FIRST

One of the first items we study in this course is the interaction between point-like charged particles. That is, particles that are considered so small that their size is irrelevant. In this activity you will investigate, qualitatively, how this interaction can be described. The previous knowledge you need for this, from physics 1, is that :

• Forces represent interactions between objects
• Forces are represented mathematically by vectors

The second point will be essential when we investigate the quantitative aspect of this interaction in our second lab.

The exercise works as follows:

1. Launch the simulation by clicking here . 
2. You may want to explore the simulation prior to reading the questions just to get a feeling of what it does.
3. Reload t he page to reset it to its default values..
4. Notice the numerical values used for the charges. They are nano Coulombs. The coulomb is the SI unit of electric charge. Nano stands for 1x10^-9 . 
5. Read the questions/instructions to manipulate the simulation and answer the questions based on your observations. The exercise is set-up as a quiz so it can be automatically graded (except for questions that require you to upload files)
6. You have 3 attempts. The highest score will be your score for this lab. You will need to upload the graph files for each attempt. 
7. Some questions involve Logger Pro a software we will use occasionally for data analysis and graphing. The laptops already have this installed. After downloading the files click on them to open them and carry on with the exercise.