Why do Coulomb's law and gravity share the same inverse-square form, and how does simply swapping two labels prove both obey Newton's Third Law?
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Charge, its quantization and its conservation
Record the two signs of charge with the coulomb as SI unit, the free charge with and , and transfer as the only route in a closed system.
Coulomb's law for two point charges
Write with , and record which sign of gives repulsion and which gives attraction along the joining line.
Third-law check on the inverse-square force laws
Interchange the labels 1 and 2, apply to reach , and repeat the one-line argument for the electrostatic force.