Melody Murphy, age 14, of New Bedford, Mass., for her question:

WHO FORMULATED COULOMB'S LAW?

Coulomb's Law states that the force between two electric magnetic charges varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. Coming up with that bit of wisdom was a French scientist, inventor and army engineer named Charles Augustin de Coulomb. He lived from 1736 until 1806.

A coulomb is the unit that measures the quantity of electricity flowing past a section of an electric circuit in one second when the current is one ampere. An electric current carrying one coulomb per second is called a current of one ampere. The name coulomb was given to the unit in honor of Charles de Coulomb.

The French physicist also invented instruments for measuring magnetic and electric forces.