Why is electric charge quantized?

AI Thread Summary
Electric charge is quantized, meaning it exists in discrete amounts, primarily observed in elementary particles like electrons. The mainstream answer to why charge is quantized remains elusive, as it ties into fundamental questions about the nature of particles. Understanding quantization is crucial because it underpins the behavior of matter and electromagnetic interactions. In practical terms, for charges comparable to an electron, the quantization is often negligible, allowing for the assumption of continuous charge distributions. Overall, the quantization of electric charge is a foundational concept in physics that raises deeper questions about the existence of particles.
kye
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What is the mainstream answer? And why is asking if the electric charge is quantized important? What does it mean to have charge that is not quantized?
 
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At one level, you are asking "why are there electrons?" That is probably not a question that mainstream physics can answer (though some particle theorists might be looking a reason).

Unless you are considering charges that are a similar size to one electron, the quantization usually isn't important,and you can assume charge distributions, electric currents, etc are continuous.
 
Thread 'Motional EMF in Faraday disc, co-rotating magnet axial mean flux'

Thread 'Motional EMF in Faraday disc, co-rotating magnet axial mean flux'

So here is the motional EMF formula. Now I understand the standard Faraday paradox that an axis symmetric field source (like a speaker motor ring magnet) has a magnetic field that is frame invariant under rotation around axis of symmetry. The field is static whether you rotate the magnet or not. So far so good. What puzzles me is this , there is a term average magnetic flux or "azimuthal mean" , this term describes the average magnetic field through the area swept by the rotating Faraday...
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