eli5 why is the charge of electrons and protons the same despite the significant size difference?

Question

Curious if there is any relationship between size of particles and charge. If the proton was the same size as an electron, would their charges no longer cancel eachother out?

In: 5

Answer 1

There is the concept of conservation of charge as well as a few others. If we imagine beta decay where a neutron “turns into” a proton the charge is reduced by 1. Conveniently an electron has this exact same charge to allow the charge part of the accounting to add up. I guess any number of electrons with partial charge could do the job.