Attraction of a positive and negative charge

[efdee]

No one could ever explain to me the mechanism how attraction of positive and negative charge works.
Can you? (Exchange of (virtual) photons only explains repulsion.) An electrical field is playing hide and seek.

 

[Nugatory]

No one could ever explain to me the mechanism how attraction of positive and negative charge works.

There may not a better answer than "That's the way the universe we live in works". Physical science is about discovering and understanding the rules that govern the behavior of the universe; but that doesn't tell us why the universe is governed by one set of rules instead of another. There are two kinds of charge, not one or three or thirty-three, but no amount of studying the behavior of the two-types-of-charge universe that we live in will tell us why it's two instead of three or thirty-three.

This doesn't mean that these questions aren't worthwhile, but it does mean that at some point we 're going to run up against that "because that's the way it is" wall. For example, asking why the motions of the planets are what they are led to the discovery of gravity and Newton's $F=Gm_1m_2/r^2$ - immensely worthwhile! But now we're up against more questions: What is the mechanism that causes the attraction between two masses? Why is the force proportional to $1/r^2$ and not something else like $1/r^3$? Sooner or later we're going to end up at "Because that's how the universe works".

 

[CWatters]

Not my field but Google suggests you look at books by Michael Peskin and/or Anthony Zee. Apparently it's all to do with Feynman diagrams and scattering amplitudes and it also explains why "like mass" attracts (eg gravity) yet like charges repel. Let me know the answer in plain English when you find out :-)