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Question

Explain the meaning of the statement 'electric charge of a body is quantized'.

Why can one ignore qunatization of electric charge when dealing with macroscopic, i.e., large scale charges?

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Solution

It means that the charge on any body is the integral multiple of charge on an electron because the charge of an electron is the elementary charge in nature. The charge on any body can be expressed by the formula
q=±ne
where , n=number of electrons transferred
and e=charge on one electron.
The cause of quantization is that only integral number of electrons can be transferred from one body to other.

We can ignore the qunatization of electric charge when dealing with macroscopic charges because the charge on one electron is 1.6×1019C in magnitude, which is very small as compared to the large scale charge.


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