[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 have a property such that they are attracted to protons and some other things, and are repelled by other electrons and some other things. As well, they move in magnetic fields, but in the opposite direction that a proton would move.
So we define one of the charges, the proton’s, to be positive, and the electron’s to be negative. Anything that doesn’t get either attracted or repelled is considered neutral.
We made up the words we use for it, so that’s how we “know” an electron is negatively charged, we defined it to be that way, because the words negatively charged are what we have said describes the motion of electrons.
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