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Who Discovered the inverse square law?

Updated: 4/28/2022
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There is more than one kind of Inverse Square Law. French physicist, Charles Augstine de Coulomb (1736-1806) established the Inverse Square Laws of Electricity and Magnetism in 1785. [Electromagnetic Fields and Waves by V.V. Sarwate] However, the more controversial Inverse Square Law of Gravity is slightly convoluted. In the end it was Isaac newton, but before you blow a breaker, let me try to explain. Ismael Bouleau only assumed, without much evidence, that gravity behaves exactly like light. Robert Hooke tried to sort out what Bouleau did wrong, but in his paper to the Royal Society in London, he used Newton's 3rd law of motion, and did not have the mathematical formula to back it. Hooke was a rival scientist of Newton, who also harshly criticised Newton's work. The famous Hooke/Newton dispute has gone down in history as Hooke states Newton stole his work in his "Principia" (1686-7) for the Inverse Square Law - as it pertained to gravity in the planets orbiting around the sun. In 1679, Hooke wrote Newton that "The velocity of a planet varies as the reciprocal of its distance from the sun," which was completely wrong. Christopher Wren challenged each of them to produce the math to prove Newton's law of universal gravitation follows an inverse-square law (just as do the effects of electric, magnetic, light, sound, and radiation phenomena). Only Newton was successful and his world view still dominates physics today.

Seventeen Equations that Changed the World (2012) by Ian Stewart

Electromagnetic Fields and Waves (1993) by V. V. Sarwate

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Q: Who Discovered the inverse square law?
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Who discovered inverse square law?

Charles Augustin de Coulomb is credited with the discovery of the inverse square law. It was used by Isaac Newton in his prismatic experiments.


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The inverse square law.


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The concept of inverse square law was developed by Isaac Newton in the late 17th century. Newton formulated the law to describe the intensity of gravitational force, stating that the force between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This concept of inverse square law is also applicable to other physical phenomena, such as light and sound.


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What does the inverse-square law tell you about the relationship between force and distance?

The inverse-square law applies to gravitational and electrical forces. An inverse-square law tells you:That the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance.That means that if the distance is increased by a factor "n", the force is decreased by a factor "n2".For example, if you increase the distance by a factor of 10, the force will decrease by a factor of 102 = 10 x 10 = 100.


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