Electric Charge as a Vector Quantity

Starting with the premise that the electric charge associated with fundamental fermions (quarks and leptons) can, under certain circumstances, be appropriately represented as a real \emph{internal} 2-vector, the mathematical ``machinery'' implicit in the associated internal 2-space is shown to apply to \emph{all} fundamental fermions. In particular, it is shown that \emph{flavor eigenstates}, \emph{flavor doublets} and \emph{families} of fundamental fermions can all be represented in the 2-space, and that such things as internal \emph{colors}, \emph{family replication}, and the observed \emph{number} (three) of families, are more-or-less implicit in the new 2-space description. Moreover, the model predicts that, unlike the case in the standard model, particles such as the $u$, $c$ and $t$ quarks are characterized by significant internal (topological and other) differences. Similar differences may help explain recent observations of (nearly) maximal $\nu_{\mu}-\nu_{\tau}$ mixing.