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Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

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Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#231

Post by yarg »

That explanation seems wrong - or rather it seems to address a completely unrelated question.

The convention by which an electron is negative and a proton positive is arbitrary and could be flipped;

Indeed it could be replaced by any pair of charge definitions x and !x.

However that has zero impact on the direction of a current's flow through a conductor (that's a physical process and is not defined or impacted by the established conventions).

I'm not sure what the real answer is, by my high school physics teacher told me that the charge is carried not by the electrons, but by the gap (a virtual particle) that flows backward as the electrons move forward.

(Similar to the way that a gap in traffic propagates backwards.)

I have no idea how wrong this is, so hopefully check the comment below from whoever bothered to correct me.

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#232

Post by gerdesj »

gravescale wrote: post #93
gerdesj wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dexter is Latin for right and sinister is left, rotatory is probably rotation and hat fit in with polarization. Where does levor... come from for left? Perhaps a newer Latin "left" than I was taught?

It comes from the Latin "laevus". Funnily enough, although "sinister" came to mean "the bad side", it may have come from Proto-Indo-European for the "favourable side".

In politics in the UK, there is a left and right side of the "house". Currently the Conservatives are the right and Labour are the left. Neither party existed when the UK Parliament was initially created.

I wonder whether the old Latin (right == good/left == dodgy) thing has been perpetrated here or it it is coincidental.

I also wonder whether old Latin speakers really had a snag with sinister ie left handers or is that a modern affectation.

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#233

Post by murderfs »

ArnoVW wrote: post #140
mrunkel wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In German we use “Akku” which is short for “Akkumulator” for rechargeable batteries.

Or ‘pile’ in French, which is homonym for ‘stack’ because a battery is a stack of alternating materials.

I was curious and tried to find out what word Volta used when publishing his discovery, and it looks like he just used "batterie" in his letter (written in French) to the Royal Society: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1800.001...

I was unable to find out who coined "Voltaic pile" after a few minutes of Googling.

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#234

Post by Dylan16807 »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #113
a1445c8b wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the word “accumulator” wouldn’t be enough to differentiate batteries from capacitors, inductors, etc. which are also accumulators.

> inductors, etc. which are also accumulators. In what sense do inductors accumulate? Batteries and capacitors accumulate (i.e. integrate) current. Inductors differentiate current: v = L di/dt means you get voltage out of current changes.

The voltage an inductor creates will restore the current. It's storage.

And while a capacitor's voltage is the integral of current, a battery's voltage isn't.

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#235

Post by [deleted] »

detourdog wrote: post #219
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inductors, etc. which are also accumulators. In what sense do inductors accumulate? Batteries and capacitors accumulate (i.e. integrate) current. Inductors differentiate current: v = L di/dt means you get voltage out of current changes.

I think this might be why accumulate is a good term. If one needed an accumulator that regulated voltage an inductor might work. Warning I barely know what I'm talking about.

[deleted]

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#236

Post by Dylan16807 »

philipov wrote: post #167
mr_mitm wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's either six vs two, or three vs one, depending on what you mean by charge. The quarks and gluons can be red, blue, green, antired, antiblue, or antigreen.

I was hoping someone would catch that ;)

Why?

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#237

Post by Dylan16807 »

privacyking wrote: post #227
verbalstoner wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Veritasium video has been completely debunked by people dedicated to studying and especially working with electricity. Derek is a hack and you should look for real science channels, not popsci slop.

What's a good source that explains the truth then?

I don't want to go screen videos right now, but his is vague and misleading about what it means for a bulb to "turn on". Putting current into a wire will also put a temporary tiny current spike into any adjacent wires. But that's it until the main current gets all the way around the loop.

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#238

Post by lugoues »

Spivak wrote: post #223
spaceywilly wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I see many questions that start with “If the electrons are flowing from the negative terminal…” The movement of electrons is inconsequential. It’s the magnetic fields between electrons that provide the power in an electric circuit. These fields actually don’t even travel through the wires! They move around the space outside the wires. Ask anyone who has routed a differential signal pair :)

Should I think about it as ripples traveling through the magnetic field like a wave?

Sort of, electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin, electromagnetism, so it's waves in the electromagnetic field with the wire acting as a wave guide. (as far as I understand)

Veritasium has a video that goes over this. It was pretty controversial at release but it gives a good overview. https://youtu.be/oI_X2cMHNe0

And why magnets work due to relativity https://youtu.be/1TKSfAkWWN0

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#239

Post by mandeepj »

throwway120385 wrote: post #13

Because he didn't know anything about electrons, and the experiment he did involving rubbing amber and glass rods on fur and silk cloth only showed that something was transferred between the two materials, and that when the material containing the substance was brought near to the other material containing the other substance, the property conferred by the substances appeared to negate. If you read Teaching Introduct…

> If you read Teaching Introductory Physics the author very clearly points out that there is no way of knowing the direction of the charge

The author is wrong and you also. If people don't know about things then I'd rather have them stay quiet and learn about them rather than spreading misinformation.

DC Current flow: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Direct_current#:~:te....

AC Current flows both ways: https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Alternating_current

Re: Why does current flow the opposite way from the electrons?

#240

Post by perilunar »

somat wrote: post #52
detourdog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often prefer the original language of discovery. My favorite is the term accumulator compared to battery.

That is a much better term, battery: inconsequential detail on how it is constructed. accumulator: what it does.

I like battery. A battery is a group of (one or more) (electrolytic|electrochemical|galvanic) cells. Like pile it is a collective noun.
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