3 ms·
> something like a winding number (which has to be an integer). Electric charge is a kind of "defect" or "kink" in the photonic field, while color charge (quark
by empath75 8mo ago
> something like a winding number (which has to be an integer). Electric charge is a kind of "defect" or "kink" in the photonic field, while color charge (quarks) are defects in the strong-force field, etc.
Quark's don't have integer charge
- franktankbank 8mo agoRedefine the down quark charge as the fundamental unit and you lose nothing.
- marcosdumay 8mo ago> you lose nothing For some reason electrons have charge -3 then, that coincides with the proton charge for no good reason.
- AnimalMuppet 8mo agoRight, but then you have the questions of 1) why do leptons have (a multiple of) the same fundamental unit as quarks, and 2) why does that multiple equal the number of quarks in a baryon, so that protons have a charge of exactly the same magnitude as electrons? I mean, I guess you could say that charge comes from (or is) the coupling of the quark/lepton field to the electromagnetic field, and therefore if it's something that's quantized on the electromagnetic side of that, then quarks and leptons would have the same scale. I'm not sure that's the real answer, much less that it's proven. (But it might be - it's a long time since my physics degree...)
- franktankbank 8mo ago> it's a long time since my physics degree... me too, just addressing that a fraction might as well be an integer with some redefinition of the fundamental charge.