Coulomb's law for the electric force between two stationary, electrically charged bodies has much the same mathematical form as Newton's law of universal gravitation: the force is proportional to the product of the charges, inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and directed along the straight line between them. The Coulomb force that a charge q 1 exerts upon a charge q 2 is equal in magnitude to the force that q 2 exerts upon q 1 , and it points in the exact opposite direction. Coulomb's law is thus consistent with Newton's third law.