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Electric charge is a conserved property: the net charge of an isolated system, the quantity of positive charge minus the amount of negative charge, cannot change. Electric charge is carried by subatomic particles. In ordinary matter, negative charge is carried by electrons, and positive charge is carried by the protons in the nuclei of atoms.
The presence of either a positive or negative electric charge produces an electric field. The motion of electric charges is an electric current and produces a magnetic field . In most applications, Coulomb's law determines the force acting on an electric charge.
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. Since current can be the flow of either positive or negative charges, or both, a convention is needed for the direction of current that is independent of the type of charge carriers.
in nuclear reactions) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. [13] Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, [14] and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. [1] The electron's mass is approximately 1/1836 that of the ...
The phenomenon of static electricity requires a separation of positive and negative charges. When two materials are in contact, electrons may move from one material to the other, which leaves an excess of positive charge on one material, and an equal negative charge on the other. When the materials are separated they retain this charge imbalance.
An object may possess a property known as electric charge. Since an electric field exerts force on a charged object, if the object has a positive charge, the force will be in the direction of the electric field vector at the location of the charge; if the charge is negative, the force will be in the opposite direction.
An ion (/ ˈaɪ.ɒn, - ən /) [1] is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge. The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by convention. The net charge of an ion is not zero because its total number of electrons ...
The elementary charge, usually denoted by e, is a fundamental physical constant, defined as the electric charge carried by a single proton or, equivalently, the magnitude of the negative electric charge carried by a single electron, which has charge −1 e. [ 2 ][ a ] In the SI system of units, the value of the elementary charge is exactly ...