It is said that charge is a property of fundamental matter but mass is also property of matter even we can realize the term mass i.e. it indicates how hard it is to drag a matter. What kind of property charge is and who gave the the concept of of charge and why it is called charge?
34955
Is there a definition of  and proper explanation of it?  It is said "Electric charge is the physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when close to other electrically charged matter."  How is it though that matter can get charged?  Defining charge as the property of feeling a force with other charged matter seems circular.  What is charge?  Is there a non-circular definition / explanation?
94291
The well known Larmor formula tells us that an accelerated classical charge radiates a power proportional to the square of the acceleration. It has been  that a charge in free fall in a gravitational field does not radiate. Since gravity is locally equivalent to acceleration, one may wonder whether a charge at rest in a gravitational field radiates. The  is that it does. However this radiation is not  to an observer in the same reference frame! Apparently, the radiation does not carry energy or momentum, or it would be observable, in this reference frame and this would mean that charged matter behaves differently from neutral matter in gravity.    How does unobservable EM radiation without energy and momentum make sense (Q1)?  Does the physical origin of charge acceleration determine whether radiation is observable or not (Q2)?  Is the answer to the question in my title "It depends?"?   Note added:  I did not find the discussion at  and  sufficiently enlightening.
110852
The electron is particle. The mass of electron is $9.10938215(45)\times 10^{−31}\, {\rm kg}$.  But why is the mass exactly what it is?  What in physics defines the mass of elementary particle?
48547
Do massless particles have a meaning in Newtonian mechanics? Do they have a physical interpretation? Because we don't have an equation of motion for massless particles, we don't have a gravitational potential. We could have electric potential but then we lack the equation of motion. I don't see how they can be a physical object, but I would love to hear from you about this.
26661
I know this isn't the right place for asking this question, but in other places the answers are so awfull.. I'm studying eletricity, so, I start seeing things like "charges", "electrons has negative charges",etc. But I didn't quite understand what charge is. I search a little bit on the internet and found it related to electromagnetic fields, then I thought "negative and positive may be associeted with the behaviour of the particle in the field, great!", but the articles about e.m. fields already presuppose "negative" and "positive" charges. In other places, I see answers relating charges to the amount of electrons/protons in an atom, but if that's right, the "negative" electron is an atom without any protons? What about the neutron? So, my questions are (1) What are charges; and (2) How a particle can "be" electrically charged. What does that really mean? Thanks for your time.
2995
There was a reason why I constantly failed physics at school and university, and that reason was, apart from the fact I was immensely lazy, that I mentally refused to &quot;believe&quot; more advanced stuff until I understand the fundamentals (which I, eventually, never did). As such, one of the most fundamental things in physics that I still don't understand (a year after dropping out from the university) is the concept of . No one cared to explain what a field actually is, they just used to throw in a bunch of formulas and everyone was content. The school textbook definition for a field (electromagnetic in this particular case, but they were similar), as I remember it, goes like:  An electromagnetic field is a special kind of substance by which charged moving particles or physical bodies with a magnetic moment interact.  A special kind of substance, are they for real? This sounds like the authors themselves didn't quite understand what a field is so they decided to throw in a bunch of buzzwords to make it sounds right. I'm fine with the second half but a special kind of substance really bugs me, so I'd like to focus on that. Is a field material? Apparently, it isn't. It doesn't consist of particles like my laptop or even the light. If it isn't material, is it real or is it just a concept that helps to explain our observations? While this is prone to speculations, I think we can agree that in scope of this discussion particles actually do exist and laws of physics don't (the latter are nothing but human ideas so I suspect Universe doesn't &quot;know&quot; a thing about them, at least if we're talking raw matter and don't take it on metalevel where human knowledge, being a part of the Universe, makes the Universe contain laws of physics). Any laws are only a product of human thinking while the stars are likely to exist without us homo sapiens messing around. Or am I wrong here too? I hope you already see why I hate physics. Is a field not material but still real? Can something &quot;not touchable&quot; by definition be considered part of our Universe by physicists? I used to imagine that a &quot;snapshot&quot; of our Universe in time would contain information about each particle and its position, and this would've been enough to &quot;de&quot; it but I guess my programmer metaphors are largely off the track. (Oh, and I know that the uncertainty principle makes such (de)serialization impossible — I only mean that I thought the Universe can be &quot;defined&quot; as the set of all material objects in it). Is such assumption false? At this point, if fields indeed are not material but are part of the Universe, I don't really see how they are different from  except for perhaps a more geeky flavor. When I talked about this with the teacher who helped me to prepare for the exams (which I did pass, by the way, it was before I dropped out), she said to me that, if I wanted hardcore definitions,  a field is a function that returns a value for a point in space.  Now this finally makes a hell lot of sense to me but I still don't understand how mathematical functions can be a part of the Universe and shape the reality.
40103
As written in Principles of Physics by Halliday, Resnick and Walker:     The electric field is a vector field; it consists of a distribution of vectors,one for each point in the region around a charged object. In principle, we can define the electric field at some point near the charged object. We first place a positive charge $q_0$, called a test charge,at the point. We then measure electrostatic force $\vec{F}$ that acts on the test charge. Finally, we define the electric field $\vec{E}$ at that point due to the charged object as $$\vec{E} = \frac{\vec{F}}{q_0}$$ .   So, this is the way they derive the electric field. But one thing that perplexes me is that as test charge has its own field, so when the test charge is introduced in the field of concerned charged object, say another point charge $+q$ , won't it get shifted due to the repulsion from the test charge $q_0$ (which is, by convention, positive)? Then consequently the field of $+q$ will also be shifted. In a word, it will get disturbed by that test charge. But the book derived the formula as if the positive point charge $+q$ remained fixed i.e. the test charge had no effect on the field of the point charge. But how can it be? If the test charge $q_0$ is a charge, then obviously it has also field which will exert force on $+q$. So how can the formula be true? Why did the book neglect this?  This phenomenon can be compared to earth's gravitational field. When a body moves upward, it exerts force on the earth downward. But as the earth has huge mass, its shifting can be neglected and hence it doesn't affect its gravitational field.   But here it is a point positive charge; it has no huge mass. So why did the book neglect its shifting and how can the formula be true? Please help.
116038
I'm interested in getting a basic physical understanding of how Earth's magnetic field is generated. I understand that it's a "dynamo" type of effect, driven by convection currents in the molten outer core. These currents cause charges to move, and this generates the field.  However, what I can't find a good explanation of is why there is a separation of charges in the first place. Presumably, moving neutrally charged molten iron would have the same effect as moving any other neutrally charged thing, i.e. it wouldn't create a field.  And presumably, if the fluid wasn't moving then it would become neutral pretty quickly, since molten iron is a good electrical conductor.  So am I right in thinking that the charge separation is the result of positive feedback, in that an intial deviation from neutrality would generate a field, and this would (somehow) cause a greater separation of charges, resulting in a kind of self-maintaining charge separation?  Or is there another explanation?  In either case, does anyone know of a good resource that explains the basic principles in physical terms?  I know that the interior dynamo is a very complex phenomenon, but I'd like something that gives a good physical picture of how the electromagnetic and fluid dynamical phenomena interact, rather than diving straight into partial differential equations.
30481
In Concepts of Physics by Dr.. H.C.Verma, in the chapter on "Capacitors", in page 144, under the topic "Capacitor and Capacitance" the following statement is given:     A combination of two conductors placed close to each other is called a capacitor. One of the conductors is given a positive charge and the other is given an equal negative charge. The conductor with the positive charge is called the positive plate and the other is called the negative plate. The charge on the positive plate is called the charge on the capacitor …   Note that the term charge on a capacitor does not mean the total charge given to the capacitor.   (Emphasis mine)  According to the above statement, "the charge on the capacitor" is the charge on the positive plate when both positive and negative plates of a capacitor are equally charged? How to extend this definition when the two plates are unequally charged?   Suppose we supply charges $+Q_1$ and $-Q_2$ to the positive and the negative plates respectively. After electrostatic conditions are attained, I determined the charge distribution on the four surfaces - outer surfaces and inner surfaces of the two plates. The charge on the outer surfaces of the two plates are equal to $\frac{Q_1-Q_2}{2}$. The magnitude of charge on the inner surface of the two plates is $\frac{Q_1+Q_2}{2}$.   Now coming to my doubt, if the "charge on the capacitor" is the charge on the positive plate, which surface of the positive plate should I want to consider - the outer one or the inner one? And what is the reason for this choice? It seems to me that, a capacitor with unequal charges on its plates is not a capacitor in the first place (inferred from the statement above).
2651
What is the explanation between equality of proton and electron charges (up to a sign)? This is connected to the gauge invariance and renormalization of charge is connected to the renormalization of photon field, but is this explanation enough? Do we have some experimental evidence that quarks have 2/3 and -1/3 charges? By the way I think about bare charge of electron and proton. And I am also wondering if this can be explained by Standard Model.
55997
This is something that has long bothered me, and I have asked a few physicists and chemists and never gotten a very satisfying answer. Why are particles charged? And I'm not asking (and this is the answer you often get) why some molecule might be negatively charged because the answer to that is simply is that there was one more negatively charged particle than positively charged particle. That doesn't answer my question, however, of why there are charged particles at all?  So, on a fundamental level, what makes one particle charged and another one neutral.  For instance, protons and neutrons have almost exactly the same mass, which I'm assuming that means they have very similar internal compositions, yet one is positively charged and the other neutral. What is going on that makes these particles different?  On a similar note, and I'd really like to know this, how is it that a proton and an electron have exactly equal and opposite charge, yet an electron is about 1000 times less massive than a proton?  I have particular trouble with this question because if the answer were something along the lines of "particle X which composes protons all have partial positive charges of n amount..." I would just ask why particle X has any charge and we'd be in the same predicament.  I'm sure there is a satisfactory answer to my question, I just can't find it and don't know what resources are reliable or detailed enough to be satisfactory.
11677
Geiger and Marsden's experiment led Rutherford to believe that the positive charge and most of the mass of the atom was concentrated in a small region. I understand what led him to conclude the way the positive charge is positioned in the atom. But how did he conclude that most of the mass was in a small region (the nucleus)?  How did the distribution of the mass matter after all? Given that the electric force is greater than the gravitational force by many magnitudes, the force between the positice charge and the electrons was predominantly electric.   So how did Rutherford conclude that most of the mass is in the nucleus?
51799
What is the difference between the weight of an object and the mass of an object?
75454
For historical reasons, I understand that a proton's charge was assigned the label of "positive", the electron's charge was assigned the label of negative, and, crucially, equations of current in E &amp; M are written with the notion that current is the flow of positive charge despite the rarity of actual flows of protons in real systems (which I understand are mostly biological systems).   If the possibility existed to instantaneously and at no cost, retcon these associations such that protons have a negative charge, electrons have a positive charge, and current remains the flow of positive charge, would there be any beneficial or detrimental outcomes?  For instance, would there be:   new interpretations of physical laws that would provide different or better insights into any relevant subfield of Physics significant simplifications to notation in any field of Physics or Engineering significant increases in understanding in the fields of electricity, electronics, electrical engineering, radiation/radiative transport, etc. a noticeably easier learning curve for any subfield of physics dealing with the concept of charge   Additionally, is there a permutation of positive charge, negative charge, and flow of current definition that would improve upon the one I suggested?
30987
Why do we have an elementary charge $e$ in physics but no elementary mass? Is an elementary mass ruled out by experiment or is an elementary mass forbidden by some theoretical reason?
64431
I have read that all electrons are identical and I assume the same for protons, etc. That is, all electrons are of the exact same mass and charge.  But do we really know this? Could there be slightly heavier electrons with slightly higher charge or is there a reason why such particles could not exist or would be unstable?
93694
My teacher said that the force is mass times acceleration. But, how are mass and acceleration related to force?