Question

What are some examples of electric charges?

Answer 1

In order to understand the examples of electric charges, we first need to understand what is meant by the term electric charge. An electric charge is a physical property of a matter which causes the matter to experience an electrostatic force and magnetic force when placed in Electric and Magnetic fields respectively. We shall see the examples of electric charges in the following section.

Complete step-by-step solution:
There are three basic examples (types) of electric charges. These are:
(i) Positive charges: These types of charges are induced in a body or a substance when due to some reason, the body gets electron deficient. The deficiency of electrons causes the body to lose its electrical neutrality and the body gets positively charged.
(ii) Negative charges: When a substance, after going through a physical or chemical process gains some extra electrons in its atoms, the substance as a whole gets negatively charged due to this extra gain of electrons and thus loses its electrical neutrality.
(iii) Neutral charges: Under normal conditions, the atoms of a substance are well balanced electrically, that is, they do not possess an excess of electrons or neutrons. This electrical balance implies the net charge on the substance must be equal to zero. Hence, they are termed as neutral or nil charges.

Note: It should be noted that these electric charges experience electrostatic force when they are kept in an Electric field, that is , this force is independent of the fact that whether the charges are static or moving. But in a magnetic field, the charges will experience Magnetic force only if the cross product of their relative velocity with the magnetic field is non-zero.