Are protons positive, neutral or negative?
2 Answers
Positive.
Explanation:
Protons have a positive charge of
Protons, i.e.
Explanation:
Note the word
The point is that protons are CHARGED MASSIVE particles that have an OPPOSITE ELECTRIC CHARGE TO ELECTRONS, particles of negligible mass that are conceived to whizz about the nuclear core.
Because there are so many more quantum chemists than particle physicists, it would have made a whole lot more sense to assign the electron a positive charge, and the nuclear proton a negative charge. This would have saved generations of quantum chemists from the right answer numerically but the WRONG sign when they did a calculation on a many electron atom and counted odd when they should have counted even or vice versa...
Of course, now we are stuck with the original assignment...
