It’s the Attraction

Many people do not understand electric charge. Maybe because it is enshrouded inside Physics. However, it is quite easy to explain.

There are two bits, and they are opposite to each other. If two of these which are the same are near each other, they push the other one away. If they are different, they clutch each other vehemently.

That is the basis of “Electrostatics”.

Having noticed that this happens, it was a logical step to find out how much they pushed each other away, or clutched each other (vehemently).

So the “push” or “pull” was measured with “pushing and pulling” measuring devices (“springs”).

For want of better names, we called each bit “positive” and “negative”. I think that “ding” and “dong”, or “Laurel” and “Hardy”, are much more interesting. I will stick with the latter because it is more fun.

So, Laurel-Laurel and Hardy-Hardy push each other away, and Laurel-Hardy love each other dearly.

But how much?

A Law emerged. It is named after two different scientists, depending on the certification.

Coulomb’s Law for the kids ( PG rating), and Gauss’ Law for the adults (18 rating).

The PG goes like this –

The amount of push (or pull) is found by multiplying together the number of all the Laurels and all the Hardys, and dividing the answer by how much distance there is between them. There ARE mitigating circumstances (such as you have to multiply this distance by itself before dividing, and then multiplying this very answer by something else which never changes), but in essence, this is Coulomb’s Law.

In Symbols, it becomes:


Where q1 and q2 are how many Laurels and Hardys there are respectively, and r is the distance between them.

Because Laurel and Hardy are opposite, we need to put a “minus” (“-“) sign in front of one of the numbers (it does not matter which). Then, because of the physics and math at work, the “push” answer is a number greater than zero, and the “pull” answer is a number less than zero.

That’s it! From these simple observations, all electricity began. Without this knowledge, there would be no lighting, music, television, computers, satnav, or even cars ( I will leave you to work the last one out).