> something like a winding number (which has to be an integer). Electric charge is a kind of "defect" or "kink" in the photonic field, while color charge (quarks) are defects in the strong-force field, etc.
Quark's don't have integer charge
Quark's don't have integer charge
For some reason electrons have charge -3 then, that coincides with the proton charge for no good reason.
I mean, I guess you could say that charge comes from (or is) the coupling of the quark/lepton field to the electromagnetic field, and therefore if it's something that's quantized on the electromagnetic side of that, then quarks and leptons would have the same scale. I'm not sure that's the real answer, much less that it's proven. (But it might be - it's a long time since my physics degree...)
me too, just addressing that a fraction might as well be an integer with some redefinition of the fundamental charge.