What is the role of electrons in conducting electricity?

[tomp]

That Veritasium Video on electricity is causing a big debate.

RSD Academy has posted a video to explain the science behind Veritasium video. It is a very simplified version which deals it at the level of simple electronic devices like capacitors and transformers where as the original video is dealing at strictly electromagnetic propagation. It feels short IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--v5BXmFYv4

I agree. He is taking a special case of a wire folded back on itself (or two parallel wires) to explain why energy transfers quickly in this circuit. That is not a case of electron speed or distance traveled around the whole wire. However, if you took that same wire and formed it into a circular fashion, the capacitive and inductive effects would not be the same. What they are saying is true, but misleading when you look at what is happening in other physical configurations. If you are going to do that you should also take into account the impedance of the real wire in delivering power compared to the impedance of the source and the load. Also look at the propagation delays when working with different values of C and L for the wires. If the source impedance matches the load impedance, the waveform distortion would be minimal, but with any real wire the losses would be huge. With 300 million kilometers of wire that would be significant.

[tomp]

If you want to stick with electrons and get a basis view, this link might help:

https://apps.spokane.edu/InternetConten ... it%201.pdf

Tom

[brombo]

See link -

https://www.quora.com/How-does-quantum-mechanics-describe-electrical-conductivity

[Cogito]

David Jones of EEVBlog jumped into the debate. He explains the issue as a debate between science vs engineering. The original video is pure science, ie: electromagnetic propagation. I am not an electrical engineer, so I was not exposed to the science of electromagnetic propagation.

From the engineering (application of science) perspective, the science of electromagnetic energy propagation is simplified into laws of propagation of current in the medium. Probably that is why we are misled into believing that electrons travel at the speed of light in the wires.

Anyway, very interesting video, although he focusses on the engineering aspect of the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQsoG45Y_00

[Cogito]

See link -

https://www.quora.com/How-does-quantum-mechanics-describe-electrical-conductivity

Excellent resource, hopefully one day after retirement I will invest time to understand it.

[TubeDriver]

Interesting video. A confession: how energy travels in an A/C circuit never made any conceptual sense at all to me. Oh, I could get the right answer on tests when I took a year of undergraduate physics back in the day but the concepts made no sense to me UNLIKE most of the other concepts taught in a basic Physics 101 and 102 which were far more intuitive.

This makes me wonder about our assumptions with analog audio cable design.

[Cogito]

This makes me wonder about our assumptions with analog audio cable design.

I wonder the same. The claim in the industry that audio cables do not make any sonic difference is based on the assumption that electrons (and there by power/energy) travels in the cables. Now that we know the energy actually flows outside the cables, the cable elevators are making sense.

[Pelliott321]

This discussion just gets me to believe it’s all magic

[Roscoe Primrose]

This discussion just gets me to believe it’s all magic

You're just figuring that out now?