I'm a high school student. I love computers and electronics. Few weeks ago, I thought to build my own electronic gadget but, unfortunately I had not much knowledge in electronics. So, I decided to learn. After Googling here and there, I came across a large amount of information. Nothing, except one thing, that daunts and intimidates me is that what the term ***Charge*** means? None of the books tell what it means. Some tell that it is the basic property of the matter and just it and don't define further about it. Whereas some don't even bother to tell about it. On ***[Wikipedia][1]*** it is defined as:

> Electric charge is the physical property of matter that causes it to experience a force when close to other electrically charged matter.

The definition is quite bit difficult and confusing. Similarly from ***[All About Circuits][2]*** Website tutorials I got a different type of definition and understanding.

From books, I came to know that we still don't know much about ***charges*** even great scientists like Sir Stephen Hawking doesn't known much about it. Is it correct?
If not, then why was it written in the books (I mean here books not a book), what is its correct definition? Why majority of books don't define what ***charges*** is/are?


  [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_charge
  [2]: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_1/1.html