Coulomb's Law

Back to explaining the losers; and Coulomb lost big. Coulomb's Law states: The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two points electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.

Coulomb's law is very important, if you are a point charge, and there is only one other point charge around. Otherwise the math gets difficult.

For example, for a point charge and a fixed dipole is easier than for a free to rotate dipole, which is easier than for two freely rotating dipoles. Those rotating dipoles would be easier without to calculate if it weren't for entropy. Stupid entropy.

Anyway, when it all comes down to it the potential energy of these different two particle systems is inversely proportional to the distance to the sixth power, and no longer the second power. The Hamaker constant is used to sum up all of these forces, charge, dipole and induced dipole.

An important thing to note about the Hamaker constant is that it is always attractive in a vacuum. So even if nature abhors a vacuum, next time you feel like attracting a significant other it may not be a bad idea to pick one up. Just a little tip for all you guys out there.

Well we didn't really cover Coulomb, but after that shut out did he really deserve it? I hope you learned something anyway.