When we talk about charge of an electron, why do we not use the negative sign?
In: Chemistry
As others have said, it could be either way. For a long time it was thought that static electricity and moving electricity were different things, as one is magnetic.
In 1750, Ben Franklin proposed a “single fluid” model of electricity, where sometimes charge was positive and sometimes it was negative. It turns out this is right, and Franklin chose “vitreous electricity” as positive, and it turns out that this is caused by having fewer electrons (though that wouldn’t be known for many decades).
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