What would happen if electrons were positive and protons were negative?

Question

If electrons were positive and protons were negative, would Coulomb's law be written the same or differently?

Answer 1

There would be no difference. And the law would be written in the exact same way, as "positive" and "negative" are simply arbitrary singns attached by humans. So, we'd experience positive things when we'd once have experienced negative things...but we'd still refer to them as positive.

Answer 2

The question can be answered simply by looking at Coulomb's Law. It doesn't care what the signs of the charges are, just whether they are the same or different.

If all you did was change the sign of the charges, then the electron becomes its antiparticle, the positron, and the proton becomes the antiproton.

Until CP Symmetry was discovered to be violated (in 1964), it was believed that the laws of physics were symmetrical for antimatter. I'm not qualified to explain what would be different, but that's the place to start looking.

Answer 3

It depends....First question is whether the universe consisted of these same charges or not....if the universe did not consist of the reverse field atoms then some parts of the universe that came in contact would be neutralized....now if the universe was the same polarity, yet reversed, and every law in the anti-universe still applied then Couloumb's law would apply.....

Next question is whether the proton and electron still had the same mass in relation to our universe....if so the only difference would be in the polarity of where electrons came from....ie an electron stream would emanate from the positive side of the battery where it comes from the negative side of the battery in our world.....If the mass is reversed, then gravity is reversed, as is the "strong field" as is the "weak field" laws that apply here .....

Couloumb's law deals with quantity of electrons, so it doens't really care what the charge of the electrons are.......

Answer 4

everything would be the same. Actually, anti-protons, and anti-electrons, do exist, and are as you describe. And in theory one could make anti-atoms out of them (I even believe that it's been done for Hydrogen?)

Anyway, no change in Coulomb's law

Answer 5

Couldn't happen as they're named based on what they do rather by throwing in a what if?

Answer 6

The world woud be complteley different than how it is right now, but they're not, so let's move on

Answer 7

A black hole would be created...energy wil be reversed. This might be the reason of the existance of black holes in the universe.

Answer 8

possibly "dark matter"
or "anti-matter"

Coulomb's law...as well as all the other "laws" would have to be re evaluated....since the initial conditions would negate their basic assumptions

Answer 9

The lights on your car would make dark, the radio would listen, and the horn would suck.

Answer 10

differently