User:Anthony.Sebastian/Sbox01

Introduction

Once you have established those basic ideas about electricity, "like charges repel and unlike charges attract", then you have the foundation for electricity and can build from there. —Electric Charge, Hyperphysics Online

In reference to the physics and chemistry of electricity, charge, or more specifically, electric charge—a fundamental property of matter (cf. mass)—renders matter capable of creating and reacting to a force of attraction or repulsion to spatially separate matter that likewise manifests the property of electric charge.

Whatever constitutes electric charge constitutes it in two separate varieties, or polarities, assigned the names 'positive' and 'negative', or 'plus' and 'minus'. The force of attraction between electrically charged items of matter arises between oppositely-charged items—positive-negative—whereas the force of repulsion arises between like-charged items—positive-positive, or negative-negative.

Familiar examples of positively charged matter are protons, constituents of the nuclei of atoms, and familiar examples of negatively charged matter are electrons, constituents of atoms that surround their nuclei.

Given that the terms 'positive' and 'negative' serve only as labels to distinguish the two polarities observed in the electric charge of matter, positivity or negativity do not themselves reveal anything fundamental in the nature of electric charge. Other labels connoting dipolarity, such as yin/yang or bitter/sweet, could serve for labeling. Likewise, the positive/negative labeling of the charge dipolarity could be reversed, electrons positive, protons negative, without violating the fundamental laws of physics.