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What
is an Electric Charge? What is Coulomb’s
Law?
Type
your answer in the following box:
Charge
is the quantity of electricity responsible
for electric phenomena. It is one of
the fundamental physical quantities
in electric circuit analysis. A quantity
of charge that does not change with
time (i.e., time invariant) is typically
represented by Q.
The instantaneous amount of charge,
which is time dependent (changes over
time), is commonly by Q(t).
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What
is the Unit of Charge?
In the SI units [Table 1],
the unit of electric charge is the Coulomb
(C), which is a quantity measurement
of electrons. One coulomb contains 6.25
x1018 electrons. We know
from basic physics that there are two
types of charges: positive (corresponding
to a proton), and negative
(corresponding to an electron). The
proton charge is equal to +1.602 ×
10-19 C, while the electron
charge is -1.602 × 10-19
C. The influence of charges is characterized
in terms of the forces between them.
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