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Electric charge is one of the fundamental properties of matter, intimately related to electromagnetic interactions. It's classified into two types - positive and negative. Like charges repel each other, while unlike charges attract. The unit of electric charge is the coulomb (C). Subatomic particles carry charges, with electrons having a negative charge and protons a positive charge. The conservation of charge principle states that the total charge in an isolated system remains constant no matter what changes take place within the system.

Charges exert forces on each other, which bring about the vast array of observable phenomena in electricity and magnetism. In our exercise example, we see point charges, which can be thought of as idealized charges concentrated at a single point in space. This concept simplifies the problem by reducing the complex distribution of charges to manageable calculations using Coulomb's law.

Electric force is the push or pull that charged objects exert on each other. The magnitude of this force is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, as stated by Coulomb's law. Mathematically, it's expressed as \(F = K \cdot \frac{|q_1 \cdot q_2|}{r^2}\), where \(F\) is the force, \(K\) is Coulomb's constant (\(9.00 \times 10^9 \, N \cdot m^2/C^2\)), \(|q_1 \cdot q_2|\) is the absolute product of the charges, and \(r\) is the distance between the charges.

In the context of our exercise, we're using Coulomb's law to calculate the forces between each pair of charges to understand the net force acting on a charge. By considering both magnitude and direction, we ensure accurate and complete solutions to problems involving electrostatic forces.

Electrostatics is the branch of physics that studies electric charges at rest. As opposed to electrodynamics, which involves moving charges and varying fields, electrostatics focuses on static charges and constant electric fields. Central to electrostatics is the concept that force is exerted without physical contact; this action-at-a-distance is due to electric fields generated by static charges.

An electric field exerts forces on charges within its influence, giving us a useful way to visualize and calculate how charged objects behave when placed in such fields. The problem we're looking at involves electrostatic forces as all charges are stationary. By understanding electrostatic principles, one can predict how the negative point charge in our exercise will move in response to the forces exerted by the other two stationary charges.