Why are electrons negative?

1.09K views

Like where does the charge comes from?

In: 5

20 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Once upon a time in the 18th Century, Benjamin Franklin (yeah, that one) was doing experiments with electricity and eventually came to the correct conclusion that you can get energy out of it by having charged particles travel from one spot to another. He decided to name the source of the flow the cathode and the destination the anode, but he didn’t know from first principles which was which. He arbitrarily decided which end was the source and that it sent out positive particles into the cathode which would have a negative charge. Other physicists just went with it since they also had no idea which direction the flow happened in.

Fast forward a couple generations and physicists actually did discover the source of electrical flow, the electron… and it turned out to go from the anode to the cathode. Oops. By then, a lot of conventions had been made around how electric and magnetic fields work with respect to the anode and cathode, so they had to make a tough decision: Either change the definitions of positive and negative electrical charges, which would require changing a lot of math, or simply redefine the direction of electric flow, which had minimal effect on the underlying math. Being the easier path, they went with the second option.

That’s the only reason that electrons are negative. If Benjamin Franklin flipped his coin and got heads instead of tails, they’d be positive instead.

You are viewing 1 out of 20 answers, click here to view all answers.