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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?

#61

Post by gerdesj »

manmal wrote: post #14
nitwit005 wrote: post #5

Could be worse. They could have chosen any term implying opposite. We could have had left and right handed charges. Although I suppose we essentially did that when naming the quarks.

Or amino acids. Many have a D (Dextrorotatory = right) or L (Levorotatory = left) form, indicating into which direction they rotate polarized light.

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?

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

#62

Post by pdonis »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #58
pdonis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no way of knowing the direction of the charge But there is--otherwise we wouldn't know that Franklin got it backwards. He thought the charge carriers were going one way, and chose the convention he did because he thought it matched the way the charge carriers were going, but it turns out they were going the other way. The signs of the charges are a convention--and the fact that we still use Franklin's conv…

How would you have known this at first from rubbing rods and playing with static electricity?

I didn't say we can know it just from rubbing rods and playing with static electricity. The post I was responding to said there is no way of knowing it, period. Which is clearly false since we do know it now.

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

#63

Post by teraflop »

wycy wrote: post #36
akira2501 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really seems like had a rationale: "We suppose as aforesaid, That Electrical Fire is a common Element, of which every one of the three Persons abovementioned has his equal Share before any Operation is begun with the Tube. A who stands on Wax, and rubs the Tube, collects the Electrical Fire from himself into the Glass; and his Communication with the common Stock being cut off by the Wax, his Body is not again imme…

It’s really strange reading the words of such an intelligent person beginning to understand something back then that is so fundamental today that even laypeople understand it more scientifically. Really weird, but really cool to get a peek back into a scientific mind in the 1700s.

Along similar lines, I recently learned about an early nuclear physics textbook written by George Gamow. The first edition came out in 1931, and the preface of the second edition in 1937 describes how the book had to be completely written because the state of knowledge had changed so radically in those few years -- most notably, by the discovery of the neutron and of induced radioactivity.

It's fun to think about a time when this stuff that we now take for granted as basic physics was not just new and poorly understood, but the forefront of knowledge was advancing so rapidly.

I haven't been able to find an online copy of the 1931 edition, but the 1937 edition is called Structure of Atomic Nuclei and Nuclear Transformations, and it's available through the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.501245

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

#64

Post by lazide »

throw0101d wrote: post #59
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…

> Numbers and numeric quantities aren't a real thing that exists in the world. They exist only in our minds. Is math invented or discovered? * https://www.sfu.ca/~rpyke/cafe/livio.pdf See also "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Wigner: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...

Was ‘Blue’ invented or discovered?

Fundamentally, it’s the same type of problem - and really more of a philosophical thing.

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

#65

Post by beryilma »

I dont understand all the details, but Veritasium and others on YouTube have videos on how the current/electron flow is also an illusion.

Since electricity and magnetism are really fields per Maxwell equations, the current flow and other electrical things that we attribute to the inside of the wire are really happening outside of the wires as electric fields.

They have a much better explanation than mine certainly...

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

#66

Post by AnotherGoodName »

It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point in the future we realise mass shields us from a gravitational field that pushes everything in all directions at once as opposed to our current thinking that mass emits a field that pulls us towards it.

Eg. imagine the earth below you shielding you from a force that otherwise pushes all mass in all directions constantly. You’re now more shielded from the push in the direction of the earth so you feel pulled that way.

It’s the same thing. Just a sign change from a convention we had no real basis to believe one way or the other.

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

#69

Post by saghm »

Terr_ wrote: post #12
urbandw311er wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

To be more specific, it's very relevant, but it's also already in the article.

Whoops, I viewed it on mobile and didn't scroll past seeing the Wikipedia link and missed that the image was below

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

#70

Post by bequanna »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #66

It wouldn’t surprise me if at some point in the future we realise mass shields us from a gravitational field that pushes everything in all directions at once as opposed to our current thinking that mass emits a field that pulls us towards it. Eg. imagine the earth below you shielding you from a force that otherwise pushes all mass in all directions constantly. You’re now more shielded from the push in the direction o…

As a layperson, that makes sense to me. It also explains the time dilation effect when near a large mass.
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