Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Electric charge (symbol q, sometimes Q) is a physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when placed in an electromagnetic field. Electric charge can be positive or negative. Like charges repel each other and unlike charges attract each other. An object with no net charge is referred to as electrically neutral.
A proton by definition carries a charge of exactly 1.602 176 634 × 10 −19 coulombs. This value is also defined as the elementary charge. No object can have a charge smaller than the elementary charge, and any amount of charge an object may carry is a multiple of the elementary charge.
This charge is sometimes called the Noether charge. Thus, for example, the electric charge is the generator of the U(1) symmetry of electromagnetism. The conserved current is the electric current. In the case of local, dynamical symmetries, associated with every charge is a gauge field; when quantized, the gauge field becomes a gauge boson. The ...
Charge quantization is the principle that the charge of any object is an integer multiple of the elementary charge. Thus, an object's charge can be exactly 0 e, or exactly 1 e, −1 e, 2 e, etc., but not 1 / 2 e, or −3.8 e, etc. (There may be exceptions to this statement, depending on how "object" is defined; see below.)
The magnitude of the electrical charge of one mole of elementary charges (approximately 6.022 × 10 23, the Avogadro number) is known as a faraday unit of charge (closely related to the Faraday constant). One faraday equals 9.648 533 212... × 10 4 coulombs. [5]
where n is the number of charges, q i is the amount of charge associated with the ith charge, r i is the position of the ith charge, r is the position where the electric field is being determined, and ε 0 is the electric constant. If the field is instead produced by a continuous distribution of charge, the summation becomes an integral:
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
Electrons have an electric charge of −1.602 176 634 × 10 −19 coulombs, [80] which is used as a standard unit of charge for subatomic particles, and is also called the elementary charge. Within the limits of experimental accuracy, the electron charge is identical to the charge of a proton, but with the opposite sign. [83]