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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.
However, the unit of energy electronvolt (eV) is a remnant of the fact that the elementary charge was once called electron. In other natural unit systems, the unit of charge is defined as , with the result that =, where α is the fine-structure constant, c is the speed of light, ε 0 is the electric constant, and ħ is the reduced Planck constant.
However, in an electrolytic cell, the cathode is the wire or plate having excess negative charge, so named because positively charged cations tend to move towards it. Contrast anode. cathode ray cation A positively charged ion. Contrast anion. celestial mechanics Celsius scale. Also centigrade scale.
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. An electron has an equal negative charge, i.e. −1.602 176 634 × 10 −19 coulombs .
Positive and negative charge carriers may even be present at the same time, as happens in an electrolyte in an electrochemical cell. A flow of positive charges gives the same electric current, and has the same effect in a circuit, as an equal flow of negative charges in the opposite direction.
Related to the Faraday constant is the "faraday", a unit of electrical charge. Its use is much less common than of the coulomb, but is sometimes used in electrochemistry. [4] One faraday of charge is the charge of one mole of elementary charges (or of negative one mole of electrons), that is, 1 faraday = F × 1 mol = 9.648 533 212 331 001 84 × ...
There are two recognized types of charge carriers in semiconductors.One is electrons, which carry a negative electric charge.In addition, it is convenient to treat the traveling vacancies in the valence band electron population as a second type of charge carrier, which carry a positive charge equal in magnitude to that of an electron.
Electric charge may be positive or negative. In addition to the sign of a real number, the word sign is also used in various related ways throughout mathematics and other sciences: Words up to sign mean that, for a quantity q, it is known that either q = Q or q = −Q for certain Q. It is often expressed as q = ±Q.