Beyond Why
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Electric Charges
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Why is charge quantized?

You might imagine charge working like water: keep adding a smaller and smaller amount until you have any value you want. Nature doesn't quite work that way.

Electric charge comes in discrete units:

q=neq = neq=ne

where nnn is an integer and

e=1.602×10−19 Ce = 1.602 \times 10^{-19}\,\mathrm{C}e=1.602×10−19
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C

An electron carries (−e). A proton carries (+e).
Quarks complicate the picture: they carry charges of +23e+\frac{2}{3}e+32​e or −13e-\frac{1}{3}e−31​e. but they are confined inside composite particles and aren't observed as isolated charges.

Why does nature have these particular charge units? That's where the question stops being simple particle bookkeeping and reaches the quantum structure of the Standard Model.