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What Is the World Made Of?

Introduction

What is the charge and mass of an electron?

The charge of an electron is -1.602 x 10-19 C (coulombs). Its mass is 9.11 x 10-31 kg. Both values are known to 85 parts per billion.

The electron has mass, but no size! If you direct beams of very fast, high energy particles at electrons they are deflected by the 1/r2 force between two charges no matter how close they come. If the electron had a finite radius then when the incoming particle penetrated the electron the deflection would be different.



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