From my textbook:` "When you touch a positively charged object charge spreads over your body."
My understanding is that the protons in a solid conductor are immobile since they are contained within the nucleus, and the electrons are the mobile charge carriers. How, then, is positive charge transferred? Wouldn't it make more sense for electrons from the neutrally charged object to move into the positively charged one?
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Best Answer
If there is a relative absence of electrons on the nuclei then this absence acts as if it were a positive charge. In fact, the absences can even sometimes behave like bona-fide particles; they are called "holes" in semiconductor physics.
It would make a lot more sense if electric charge were the negative of what it is. Sadly, that is not likely to happen without a completely new unit system, and because you can treat a relative-absence like a charge, it's very, very common for books to simply say "the (positive) charge flows like..." rather than "the electrons carry their negative charge in a flow like the opposite of...".