It’s admittedly confusing because electromagnetism is a unified field theory, and like I said, a bunch of pop-science YouTubers really make it worse. Current is defined as the rate of charge flow through a cross sectional surface of a conductor, which is caused by the electromotive force, which is simply a charge potential. The fields created by moving charge can be used to do work proportional to the current which creates them, but it is fundamentally the current doing the work.
The misconception is that it’s not like one electron zooming down a wire, dumping energy into a sink, but the bulk change in how electrons, and therefore charge is distributed which moves energy around. Think about pushing something with a stick - the atoms near your hand don’t actually need to move down the stick to transmit force.
socsa@piefed.social 1 month ago
It’s admittedly confusing because electromagnetism is a unified field theory, and like I said, a bunch of pop-science YouTubers really make it worse. Current is defined as the rate of charge flow through a cross sectional surface of a conductor, which is caused by the electromotive force, which is simply a charge potential. The fields created by moving charge can be used to do work proportional to the current which creates them, but it is fundamentally the current doing the work.
The misconception is that it’s not like one electron zooming down a wire, dumping energy into a sink, but the bulk change in how electrons, and therefore charge is distributed which moves energy around. Think about pushing something with a stick - the atoms near your hand don’t actually need to move down the stick to transmit force.
phr@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
please call out my half-assed knowledge more!