In the integer-fraction principle of the digital electric charge, individual integral charge and individual fractional charge are the digital representations of the allowance and the disallowance of irreversible kinetic energy, respectively. The disallowance of irreversible kinetic energy for individual fractional charge brings about the confinement of individual fractional charges to restrict irreversible movement resulted from irreversible kinetic energy. Collective fractional charges are confined by the short-distance confinement force field where the sum of the collective fractional charges is integer. As a result, fractional charges are confined and collective. The confinement force field includes gluons in QCD (quantum chromodynamics) for collective fractional charge quarks in hadrons and the magnetic flux quanta for collective fractional charge quasiparticles in the fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE). The collectivity of fractional charges requires the attachment of energy as flux quanta to bind collective fractional charges. The integer-fraction transformation from integral charges to fractional charges consists of the three steps: 1) the attachment of an even number of flux quanta to individual integral charge fermions to form individual integral charge composite fermions, 2) the attachment of an odd number of flux quanta to individual integral charge composite fermions to form transitional collective integral charge composite bosons, and 3) the conversion of flux quanta into the confinement force field to confine collective fractional charge composite fermions converted from composite bosons. The charges of quarks are fractional, because QCD (the strong force) emerges in the universe that has no irreversible kinetic energy. Kinetic energy emerged in the universe after the emergence of the strong force. The charges of the quasiparticles in the FQHE are fractional because of the confinement by a two-dimensional system, the Landau levels, and an extremely low temperature and the collectivity by high energy magnetic flux quanta. From the integer-fraction transformation from integral charge electrons to fractional charge quarks, the calculated masses of pion, muon and constituent quarks are in excellent agreement with the observed values.
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