3 ms·
Is there a reason why we say quarks have fractional charge instead of having just +-1 or +-2? And Then electron and proton would have -3 and +3?
by trenchgun 3y ago
Is there a reason why we say quarks have fractional charge instead of having just +-1 or +-2? And Then electron and proton would have -3 and +3?
- vihren 3y agoThat's purely by convention. It's just that we fist discovered electrons and protons and quarks with their fractional charges came in much later.
- lagadu 3y agoTo be clear, we say that an electron has -1e charge: that "e" is the absolute value of the charge of an electron. The charge of an electron is approximately −1.602176634×10^−19 Coulombs. Quarks have either +-2(1.602176634×10^−19)/3 or +-(1.602176634×10^−19)/3 coulombs charge. It's a fraction because we simply decided it was easier to describe an electron's charge as "e" and quark charges as being a fraction of that. It's entirely by convention. We could've just as easily have described, like you mentioned, a quark to have either +-q or +-2q charge and electrons have -3q (where q=(1.602176634×10^−19)/3 C). We just happened to find electrons significantly before. It's also convenient as we don't see free quarks so every charge we see in the universe is a multiple of e, there's no advantage to going smaller than that.