question_answer 4)

(a) Explain the meaning of the statement, ‘electric charge of a body is quantised.’ (b) Why can one ignore quantisation of electric charge when dealing with macroscopic i.e., large scale charges?  

Answer:

                (a) Refer Important definition 5.                 (b) At macroscopic level, the quantisation of charge has no practical importance because the charge at macroscopic level is very large as compared to elementary charge e i.e., . For example, a small charge of has about electronic charges. In such cases the charge maybe treated as continuous and not quantised.