Two similarly charged bodies are kept 5 cm apart in air. If the second body is shifted away from the first by another 5 cm, their force of repulsion will be

The electrostatic force between two charged bodies is governed by Coulomb's Law, which states that the force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Initially, the bodies are 5 cm apart. Shifting the second body away by another 5 cm increases the total separation distance to 10 cm. Since the distance has doubled (from 5 cm to 10 cm), the inverse-square law dictates that the force will change by a factor of 1/(2²), which is 1/4. Consequently, the force of repulsion is reduced to one-fourth of its original value. This principle applies to both attractive and repulsive forces between point charges in air or vacuum.