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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 coulomb (symbol: C) is the unit of electric charge in the International System of Units (SI). [1][2] It is equal to the electric charge delivered by a 1 ampere current in 1 second and is defined in terms of the elementary charge e, at about 6.241 509 × 1018 e. [2][1]
Abstract definition. Abstractly, a charge is any generator of a continuous symmetry of the physical system under study. When a physical system has a symmetry of some sort, Noether's theorem implies the existence of a conserved current. The thing that "flows" in the current is the "charge", the charge is the generator of the (local) symmetry group.
Coulomb's inverse-square law, or simply Coulomb's law, is an experimental law [1] of physics that calculates the amount of force between two electrically charged particles at rest. This electric force is conventionally called the electrostatic force or Coulomb force. [2] Although the law was known earlier, it was first published in 1785 by ...
An electric field (sometimes called E-field[1]) is the physical field that surrounds electrically charged particles. Charged particles exert attractive forces on each other when their charges are opposite, and repulse each other when their charges are the same. Because these forces are exerted mutually, two charges must be present for the ...
The electric field was formally defined as the force exerted per unit charge, but the concept of potential allows for a more useful and equivalent definition: the electric field is the local gradient of the electric potential. Usually expressed in volts per metre, the vector direction of the field is the line of greatest slope of potential, and ...
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 ...
In physics, charge conservation is the principle, of experimental nature, that the total electric charge in an isolated system never changes. [1] The net quantity of electric charge, the amount of positive charge minus the amount of negative charge in the universe, is always conserved. Charge conservation, considered as a physical conservation ...