Question

The additive nature of charge means the net charge of a system is:

Options

• The arithmetic sum of only the magnitudes of all charges

• The algebraic sum of all individual charges, with their signs taken into account

• The vector sum of all individual charges

• Always equal to zero for any system

Answer 1

Charge is additive: the net charge of a system is the algebraic sum of all individual charges. Since charge is a scalar, signs (+/−) are included in the sum, but no vector addition is involved.