Limitless_screaming

I am not saying that’s wrong, just that there’s 21.6N of attraction force between the two charges not -21.6N.

In this case yes, but if q1 was -20μC, q2 was 30μC, and r was 0.5m, then using -20μC as it is would make F equal to -21.6N which is just 21.6N of attraction force between the two charges.

If you have two charges q1 and q2, you can get the force between them F by multiplying them with the coulomb constant K (approximately 9 × 10^9) and then dividing that by the distance between them squared r^2.

q1 and q2 cannot be negative. Sometimes you’ll not be given a charge, and instead the problem will tell you that you have a proton or electron, both of them have the same charge (1.6 × 10^-19 C), but electrons have a negative charge.