Electrostatic force problem in Newtons

bagwellaj
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Three charges are fixed to an xy coordinate system. A charge of +14 uC is on the y-axis at y= +3 m. A charge of -14 uC is at the origin. Lastly a charge of +47 is on the x-axis at x= +3 m. Determine the magnitude and direction of the net electrostatic force on the charge at x= +3 m. Specify the direction relative to the -x axis.


Magnitude is in Newtons; direction is in degrees.

State whether the direction is above or below the -x axis.
 
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Welcome to the forums. There's this policy that you have to show your own work when you ask for help (https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=94379): So, what have you tried?
 
If tried to get the force between points x any y, and also between x and the origin, by using the formula F= Kq1q1)/r^2. The radius between x and the origin I assumed is 3, and by using the pythagoreon theorem, I used the square root of 18 for the radius between x and y. The force between x and y came out to be .3286 N. The force between x and the origin came out to be -.65727 N. I added them together to get the net electrostatic force, which came out to be -.3287 N. I'm not sure if I did this problem right. The only thing I could think to come up with for the direction is 45 degrees.
 
Force is a vector, and in this case the vectors are not pointing in the same direction. Break the vectors into x and y components.
 
I did cos45= (x/.3286) to get the magnitude of the force between x and y going in the same direction as the force between x and the origin. Does addin them together then give me the correct net force?
 
Supposing I understood what you were about to do: yes, you get the net force in x direction. To get the total net force though, you have to take the y component into account as well.
 
To solve this, I first used the units to work out that a= m* a/m, i.e. t=z/λ. This would allow you to determine the time duration within an interval section by section and then add this to the previous ones to obtain the age of the respective layer. However, this would require a constant thickness per year for each interval. However, since this is most likely not the case, my next consideration was that the age must be the integral of a 1/λ(z) function, which I cannot model.
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