Loltricity, You've Got to Love It.

Electricity and Magnetism!

Throughout the universe there exists discrete packets of energy. These charged packets can either be positive or negative. Protons are recognized as being the source of positive charge, and electrons are of negative charge. This naming convention was first used by Benjamin franklin, and it is completely arbitrary. Electric fields are what arise when charged particles are in motion, as their movement is carried out through space, there is with it brought a charge distribution.

There are many properties of electric charges to consider. The electromagnetic force between charged particles is said to be one of the fundamental forces in nature. The electric force is considered to be a manifestation of the electromagnetic force. There is a mathematical law, derived by Coulomb (French, 1736-1806), which is the fundamental law governing the electric force between any two charged particles. Also, the concept of an electric field, which involves the idea of charge distribution, helps explain the behaviour of various materials under the effect of electromagnetism.

The mechanics of electricity and magnetism have long been considered throughout human history. It was not until the 19^th century that scientists and visionaries began to strike at the heart of the matter by discovering the properties of said phenomena via experiment and mathematics. The existence of electric forces can be proven using a number of simple experiments, such as rubbing a balloon on your hair and sticking it to a wall. The charge created on the balloon by rubbing it on your head is even strong enough to pick up bits of paper.

Electrification of materials involves a transfer of charge from one area to another. There is no prioritization in the transference of charged particles. Electrons flow back and forth just as protons do, and their goal is to establish electrical equilibrium, i.e. to uniformly distribute their charges.

The behaviour of electrically charged materials depends on whether or not the material under consideration possesses an abundance of positive or negative charges (protons or electrons).  As can be demonstrated with magnets, charges of the same sign repel one another and charges with opposite signs attract one another. Another important property of electricity is that electric charge is always conserved in an isolated system – charge cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred. For example, when one object gains some proportion of negative charge, another object, from which the negative charge was transferred, gains an equal proportion of positive charge. Additionally, neutral, uncharged matter contains amounts of negative and positive charge that are equal in magnitude.

Whether positive or negative, electric charge always occurs as integral multiples of a fundamental amount of charge (represented by the constant e). What this means is that electric charge is quantized – it exists in the form of discrete packets of energy, usually represented by the variable q, to give us q = +/- Ne, where N is any integer. This discovery was made in 1909, and similar experiments from the same period allowed scientists to attribute the electron with a charge of –e, and the proton, of equal magnitude but opposite charge, with a charge of +e. It is important to note that some particles, namely neutrons, have no charge!