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- PHY102 Physics II © Dr.Cem Özdoğan
- Electric charge is quantized (restricted to certain values). The total charge of any object is found to always be a multiple of a certain elementary charge, “e”:
- The charge of a particle can be written as ne, where n is a positive or negative integer and e is the elementary charge.
- Any positive or negative charge q that can be detected can be written as
- It is possible, for example, to find a particle that has no charge at all, or a charge of +10e, or -6e, but not a particle with a charge of, say, 3.57e.
- One cannot ISOLATE FRACTIONAL CHARGE (e.g. –1/2 e, +1/3 e, etc.)
- Benjamin Franklin
- (1705–1790)
- Elementary particles either carry no charge, or carry a single elementary charge.
- The value of this elementary charge is one of the fundamental constants of nature, and it is the magnitude of the charge of both the proton and the electron.
- Since the days of Benjamin Franklin, our understanding of of the nature of electricity has changed from being a type of ‘continuous fluid’ (not correct!) to a collection of smaller charged particles.