Why Is My Calculation of Coulomb's Force Incorrect?

AI Thread Summary
The calculation of Coulomb's force between two charged spheres requires considering the effect of contact on their charges. When the two conductive spheres are placed in contact, they share their charge, resulting in a new charge distribution. After contact, the total charge is the sum of the individual charges, which must be divided equally between the two spheres since they are identical. This means recalculating the charges before applying the Coulomb's law formula. The initial calculation did not account for this redistribution of charge, leading to an incorrect force value.
LTZach
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I thought this would be a basic physics problem, but I'm not getting the right answer, here's the problem:

There are two identical small metal spheres with charges 27.5 μC and −19.119 μC. The distance between them is 8 cm. The spheres are placed in contact then set at their original
distance. Calculate the magnitude of the force between the two spheres at the final position. The Coulomb constant is 8.98755 × 109 N · m^2/C2 .
Answer in units of N.

I used the formula, F=K*((q1*q2)/r^2)). I converted the charges using the 10^-6 conversion.

So, F=(8.98755*10^9)*(27.5*10^-6 * 19.119*10^-6) all over 0.08^2 and I got 738.3448 N.

The answer is incorrect according to the online service my class uses, what did I do wrong?
 
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Did you take into account that they were temporarily placed in contact?
 
How would I do that?
 
The spheres are metal and therefore conductive. What happens to the charges when two charged conductive materials come in contact?
 
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