[Eli5] What is electrical charge? Like, how do we know that electrons have a negative charge and what does that actually mean?
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Electrons being negative is just an arbitrary decision. All we know for sure is that they have the opposite charge of protons. The reason electrons were chosen as the negative charge was because during the cathode ray tube experiment when they were discovered, the side they came from was labeled negative. The ends labeled positive and negative were arbitrary, they just needed to be consistent with each other so we know they are different.
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