I’m taking a chemistry course right now, and one of the things I’ve learned is that protons have far more mass than electrons. Despite this, electrons seem just as relevant to the state of the atom, so much so that they seem to cancel out.
I wanted to ask first, how is this the case, but second, if I’m wrong about my assessment and why?
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Mass and charge are two completely independent properties of particles. Our current understanding is that the universe is made up of these fundamental particles: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle)
Yes the electron is the lightest electrically charged particle, but there are particles with other types of “charge” that are much lighter (neutrinos), and particles with similar charges that are much heavier (tau particles, top quarks). We have no explanation as to why any particle has the mass that it does*, we’re just able to measure them. We can explain (ish) why fundamental particles have electrical charges of 0, ±1 and ±1/3, but it’s complicated. As soon as you’re talking about composite particles stuck together with the strong force, eg protons which are made of two up quarks and one down quark**, calculating the mass is a lot more complicated than just adding up the masses of the constituents.
* if you want to respond about “but the Higgs couples and gives mass” then my point is that the Yukawa coupling is not something we can determine a priori. And if you want to say that we can calculate the Higgs mass from everything else – then, kinda, but it doesn’t quite add up right.
** yes, I know there are sea quarks, but this is ELI5
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