Electric charge

Electric charge is a fundamental property of matter that determines how it participates in electromagnetic interactions. Its two signs, positive and negative, produce attraction between unlike charges and repulsion between like charges.

Coulomb's law: A law giving the electrostatic force between two point charges as proportional to their product and inversely proportional to the square of their separation. It quantifies the force between charges at rest.
Elementary charge: The magnitude of the charge of a proton or electron, approximately 1.602 × 10⁻¹⁹ coulombs. It is the basic charge unit carried by familiar subatomic particles.
Amber: A fossilized resin that becomes electrically charged when rubbed, an effect known since antiquity. Rubbing amber helped establish the earliest recorded observations of static electricity.
Electric potential: Potential energy per unit charge at a point in an electric field. Potential describes energy associated with charge, not the charge itself.
Electrostatics: The study of electric charges at rest and the electric fields and forces they produce. It describes charge accumulation and redistribution in everyday materials.
Electric field: A vector field that assigns the electric force per unit positive test charge at each point in space. Charge creates electric fields, which transmit its influence through space.
Proton: A positively charged subatomic particle found in atomic nuclei. Protons contribute positive charge to matter.
William Gilbert: An English physician and natural philosopher whose 1600 work studied magnetism and static electricity. He distinguished electrical attraction from magnetic effects and helped establish the term electricity.
Electric dipole moment: A vector measure of the separation and magnitude of positive and negative charges in a system. A system can have zero net charge yet a nonzero dipole moment.
Capacitance: A measure of a system's ability to store electric charge per unit potential difference. Capacitors store separated charge in proportion to the voltage applied.

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