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shangriphysics
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Why is a charge from say an electron a scalar. It has a constant magnitude, and it has a direction.
No, it's a bit more than a convention. You can add charges, allowing charges of opposing signs to cancel appropriately. That's a genuine mathematical interpretation of the sign.Shyan said:The +/- convention, is only a proper and easy to use convention!
Its OK to say that the two kinds of charges are black/white, fool/wise, fat/thin and any other pair of opposite nouns. The only problem is finding a way so that mathematically opposites attract and likes repel, and that's easiest when we use +/- convention, so we use it! There is nothing about direction here!
haruspex said:No, it's a bit more than a convention. You can add charges, allowing charges of opposing signs to cancel appropriately. That's a genuine mathematical interpretation of the sign.
D H said:I suspect shangriphysics is using a dictionary definition of "scalar", such as "scalar - noun. (Mathematics, Physics). A quantity possessing only magnitude." (Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scalar).
In physics (and this is a physics question), charge is a scalar rather than a vector or a tensor. In fact, it's all three; a scalar can be viewed as a one dimensional vector or a zeroth order tensor. However, we usually don't call one dimensional vectors "vectors". We call them scalars.
D H said:I suspect shangriphysics is using a dictionary definition of "scalar", such as "scalar - noun. (Mathematics, Physics). A quantity possessing only magnitude." (Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scalar).
In physics (and this is a physics question), charge is a scalar rather than a vector or a tensor. In fact, it's all three; a scalar can be viewed as a one dimensional vector or a zeroth order tensor. However, we usually don't call one dimensional vectors "vectors". We call them scalars.
A charge refers to a property of matter that causes it to experience a force when placed in an electromagnetic field.
Charge is a scalar quantity, meaning it has magnitude but does not have a specific direction in space.
Charge is considered a scalar because it only has magnitude, and does not have a direction associated with it. This is in contrast to vector quantities, which have both magnitude and direction.
Yes, charge can be either positive or negative. Objects with the same charge (either positive or negative) repel each other, while objects with different charges attract each other.
Charge is measured in coulombs (C). One coulomb is defined as the amount of charge transferred in one second by a current of one ampere (A).