Why are ELECTRONS not positively charged particles?

Question

I know electrons and protons have opposite charges, but why did they decide the electron is negative and the proton is positive? What the the positive and negative words mean exactly? Why can't the electrons be positive and the protons be negative?

Understand my confusion?

Answer 1

It's just convention. Call one A and the other one B; the only thing that matters is that A attracts B, and A repels A and B repels B.

It just happened that somebody (Ben Franklin) decided to name A positive and B negative.

Answer 2

From what I understand, it's actually backwards. Normally, when you think of something being "positive", you think of an excess of something. For example balloons have "positive" pressure compared to the pressure of the atmosphere, so they explode when popped, where as light bulbs have "negative" pressure, so they implode. The positive moves to the negative. In electricity, electrons flow from atoms with EXCESS electrons to atoms with LESS electrons (sort of like pressure). Therefore, the electrons are technically "positive"... but we didn't used to know this. We first thought electricity flows in the opposite direction, so we called the side of the battery electrons come OUT of "negative" and the side they move towards "positive". And we just never changed it.

So, to summarize, "positive" means an excess and "negative" means a deficit (think of a bank account, air pressure, distance traveled, etc). But for electricity we got the names backwards, which can be confusing.

Answer 3

Ben Franklin just made an arbitrary choice, and later it was found that the tiny electrons were responsible for the type of charge he called negative. Too late to change by then (and I have read that some people say things would have worked out more neatly if he had gone the other way)...

Answer 4

It's essentially arbitrary. However, I can tell you why the name "electron" was assigned as it was. The words "electron" and "electron" come from the Greek word for amber, the organic material. When amber is rubbed with fur, its surface develops an electric charge. This charge is what we call negative, which means it's made up of electrons, so that's why electrons were named after amber.

Answer 5

you may extra suited define the character of the advantageous charge. the two debris entering into popular into an uniform magnetic field B are deflected in distinctive instructions appearing around motions of radius R given by potential of mV^2/R=qVB or R=mV/qB if the electrical powered quotes of the two debris and their speeds are equivalent to one yet another the particle with greater mass would be extra deflected! you may mirror approximately different accessible cases. if the advantageous charge is a positron with a mass greater then the mass of the electron, it's going to be extra deflected.