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Why is one Coulomb equal to 6.24 *10^18 ? This number is weird . why wasn't it a nice number like 10^20. I have some guesses about this.

Qmechanic
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Mahmoud Amin
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    Nature does not worry about choosing “nice” numbers... pi (3.1415926....) or e 2.718...... etc.. –  Jul 07 '19 at 06:55
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    @Solar Mike I think this is different because pi and e were determined by nature itself. but in our case we chose this number for one coulomb not the nature for instance we are who determined the metre and the second not the nature . – Mahmoud Amin Jul 07 '19 at 06:58
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    @MahmoudAmin in that case there's even less reason to end up at a nice number. Especially not if you're hoping to get a nice number that relates the rotational period of Earth, the electrochemical potential between a copper plate and a bronze plate in a saline solution, the distance that's about this long, and the charge of an electron. – John Dvorak Jul 07 '19 at 07:03
  • The mathematical constants $\pi$ and $e$ are not determined by nature. – G. Smith Jul 07 '19 at 17:44

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A Coulomb is the charge transported by a constant current of one ampere in one second. One ampere and one second are very nice numbers. The details of the charge carriers are usually not important when working with electricity.

Anders Sandberg
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  • Yes but we said that this strange number of currents moving in a circuit in one second is an ampere .notice I haven't even said what this number is. Let's pretend that one coulomb is (x) then the 1ampere is this is number moving in one second regardless of the number of this value. And it will be the same . – Mahmoud Amin Jul 07 '19 at 07:10
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    @MahmoudAmin the Ampere was first defined in 1820 and the Coulomb in 1881, so the Coulomb had to defined in terms of was was there first. –  Jul 07 '19 at 07:21