Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Do we use the EFFECTS of electron flow, NOT "electricity"?

The high resistance piece of wire in incandescent light bulbs glows as a result of electrons incoming through a low resistance material being squeezed through (bombard electrons that don’t want to be moved in) the high resistance material with a certain pressure (voltage). We are using the high resistance material to usurp (convert into heat and then into light) the kinetic energy of the electrons in the low resistance material (commonly copper wire).

We do the same thing with electrical heating elements and microphones.

Are we also doing this in electrical appliances from which we don’t expect a certain “end product” (heat, light, sound)? For instance, computers. When we were still using actual physical relays to build logic gates, I can imaging electron flow being converted into the energy (eletrco magnetism?) required to actuate/move the switch inside the relay. But what about today’s transistors? The processing units inside CPUs and GPUs heat up, but that’s a side effect of something I don’t understand. We are not trying to reap that heat. We are after manipulating groups transistors into expressing boolean logic by either giving them a voltage or not.

I know very little of electricity, so please do correct any incorrect assumptions! I’m very eager to learn! 😊💡

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Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The one thing I’ve learned about electricity, is that the more you learn about how it works, the less sense any of it makes.

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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  While I understand the need to simplify things for children who do not have enough prerequisite knowledge to otherwise understand science, “dumbing it down” is what has made me - and many more - believe that electricity works just like water. This has made it so difficult for me to “transition” into seeing electricity for what it actually is: electric fields generated by slightly moving electrons. I shouldn’t have chosen music as a major. 😂
  
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  - Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I understand how to wire switches in my house, and that’s good enough for me.
    
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  - Nouvellalia@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    EM fields are to space what music is to strings and skins and lips. Atoms are symphonies stuck in a single concert hall
    
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  - Witchfire@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That’s how electromagnetism works. Electrical current consists of electrons flowing “in reverse”
    
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Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

so please do correct any incorrect assumptions! I’m very eager to learn!

It is not so much the assumptions. You need a more careful approach. Do not rush from observations to “easy” conclusions.

the kinetic energy of the electrons

The mechanical model does not fit here.

If it were kinetic energy, the outcome would be very weak because of the electrons low mass. Do the calulations and see!

Take a good science book that explains the basics and gives you the correct formulas to do such calculations.

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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Had I “concluded” anything, I wouldn’t have posted in the first place.
  
  Reading up on the subject at my local library is on the agenda. I just have get tired of programming first. 🤣
  
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- ultrafastsloth@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You are right about kinetic energy having low effect. However, in microelectronics becomes an issue, called electromigration, where the material laters are so thin that this small effect of electrons on metal atoms (the electron wind force) causes erosion, basically, movement of atoms.
  
  Image Figure 2. Schematic diagram illustrating the basic principles of electromigration (EM). The flow of electrons (blue arrows) exerts an electron wind force on metal ions (M⁺), causing them to migrate toward the anode. The red arrow indicates the direction of the electric field. The brown arrows show the direction of ion migration. Dashed circles represent vacancies left behind after the migration of metal ions. From: www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/14/15/3151
  
  And the effects on the micro wires are. really something. This errosion takes time of course, but not as long and the effect rises exponentially at the end because the current density increases.
  
  Image
  
  It kinda blew my mind during my elec. eng. studies. Anyway, just wanted to donate my two cents on this matter.
  
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phr@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
electron flow is not what transmits energy it’s the electrical field. in AC circuits electrons don’t really get transported from a source to a destination.

the water allegory unfortunately breaks down very quickly. pressure is force per area. voltage is a difference in potential (~charge).

i feel like someone might be better to really answer to your questions. my physics ed is … long gone.

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- Admetus@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I mean, to be fair the water pipe analogy is pretty good as the pressure performs work done per unit volume, and voltage is work done per unit charge which takes up a specific volume of the wire.
  
  But you’re right, with A.C. that analogy gets complicated unless supposedly you had water going back and forth in the pipe, but that is still transmitting energy like a wave does.
  
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  - phr@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    like any good model it has it’s scope. inductivity and capacity are out of scope. electrical current is not electrons pushing each other as a longitudinal wave in water could make it wiggle in a pipe. as soon as something stops to make sense in the model we need a new model.
    
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- socsa@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  This is actually incorrect as well, and I’m annoyed at veritasium for this persistent misconception. The flow of electricity is the movement of charge, which is conveyed by the electron. This is what creates the electromotive force, and what does work.
  
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  - phr@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    hm thanks for pointing that out. i will have to thonk abt that for longer though.
    
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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thanks! So it isn’t the electrons alone that we make use of, but the electric field that their tiny movements generate?
  
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  - ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    There’s a HUGE number of electrons in everything with a massive total negative electric charge but almost exactly balanced by protons. That’s why electrons move very slowly in a conductor but still transmit lots of current (electric charge over time).
    
    Accumulating charge in a place is what charging a capacitor or battery is, it creates voltage (potential difference). Charges in an electric field store energy but also their presence/absence can represent data (DRAM and flash memory) and the field has various effects we can use, such as deflecting the beam in a CRT oscilloscope controlling the flow of electrons in an eectron tube or field-effect transistor.
    
    And the current also creates magnetic field with some similar effects (deflecting the beam in a TV CRT) and some different ones (attracting magnets in a motor, inducing current in a transformer’s secndary winding).
    
    Plus, both fields can oscillate a vast range of freequencies and travel in waves, making radio, microwave ovens, vision, UV sterilization, X-ray machines etc. possible (although each of these applications uses the properties of EM waves at specific frequencies differently).
    
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solomonschuler@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
simple answer, yes, but that depends what you are going for.

for something as simple as an electrical heating element, it works by a short circuit. non shorted circuits have grounds (of which voltage is 0) this is accomplished by adding resistors, capacitors, or inductors in parallel/series (generally speaking). Now a short circuit is where you have a source connected to a wire and as current goes through that loop it will increase the amount of current since you have no element disappating the voltage/current and that energy must go to heat.

this is why I say “never to use floor heaters” since they are incredibly inefficient, energy costs go up which will end up costing more for a few hours than if you just turned on the central heat a few degrees.

as for modern transistors, its different than just doing a short circuit, there’s actual resistors and capacitors inside it than it just being a short circuit as per my previous answer. where the heat accumulates is the 20+ billion of those that’s 5 cm x 5 cm in size. for integrated (IC) circuits, electrical/electronic engineers usually work in the mW or 10^-3 W the fact that CPU’s/GPU’s (especially the desktop varients) use 120 W to 400/500 W puts into scale how much fucking energy these motherfuckers use. Heat is a given in these circumstances, were talking 10^5 larger in wattage than most IC circuits and elements (op-amps, resistors, capacitors, inductors) would ever use.

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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
when you’re using a sailing ship, you’re not actually using wind to drive, instead you’re using the energy within the wind’s movement, that’s what you’re using to push the ship forward

it’s similar with electricity. the electrons rarely get consumed (exceptions exist, mostly in electrochemistry)

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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Sweet allegory! Thanks! 😊
  
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  - ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I could add to this analogy. Yes, the wind passes from a high-pressure point to a low-pressure one but that’s just direct current. The weather can change, reversing the wind every few minutes (alternating current) and you can still harvest it with a turbine (for example, a lightbulb filament or heater lights up in either polarity) but it wouldn’t help a ship with a basic sail travel to a destination (much like DC motors, it would change direction when polarity is reversed). And then there’s sound, akin to very quick polarity changes where particles never travel very far. It doesn’t carry much energy but the waves travel faster than wind and can be modulated with a signal to carry information. Both wired and wireless electronic communication is kind of like that.
    
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You mean electromagnetism? We use electromagnetism all the time. That’s how we get electric motors.

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WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
This is a reasonable description of heating elements and incandescent lightbulbs.

Microphones, generators, speakers, and motors typically involve an electromagnet and a permanent magnet. For speakers and motors, electrons moving in a circle generates a magnetic field, which pushes against the permanent magnetic field of the permanent magnet. For microphones, and generators, it’s kinda the opposite: a permanent magnet moving near a coil of wire generates a magnetic field.

Transistors, which are the basis of modern CPUs, rely on the need for loose electrons to be around for an electric current to flow. In a carefully crafted setup, you can end up with a current flowing along one path depleting the loose electrons needed for a flow along another path to form. This creates a kind of “electric switch”.

Heat is generated in all of these processes, but it’s generally an unwanted but unavoidable byproduct, similar to heat produced by friction in a mechanical system.

I’m not sure what you mean by “EFFECTS of electron flow” vs “electricity”.

What tends to matter is the electromagnetic fields and how they change. Often we use electrons flowing in a piece of metal because they are easily influenced by electromagnetic fields, but also when there is an electron flow in a wire, the shape of that wire can result in different electromagnetic fields. However, I think it’s worth mentioning that electrons and wires are just convenient for controlling the electromagnetic force. It’s possible to have electromagnetic effects without either (for example, lightning and static electricity are electromagnetic effects that don’t involve conductors, and light is an electromagnetic effect that doesn’t rely on electrons).

I’m happy to answer more questions, I’m trying not to launch into a whole physics lecture lol but I sure can if you like.

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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thank you for the elaborate response! Are radiowaves also electromagnetic fields, or are those something completely different?
  
  What I meant by the vague title was whether we actually consume or use the electrons themselves or simply reap the biproducts of some kind of manipulation that we do with them. I guess we do both, then, since it seems like it’s the acutal current in one node of a transistor that frees up/depletes the electrons of another node/path, as opposed to heat and light, where we instead reap some biproduct?
  
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  - WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Are radiowaves also electromagnetic fields
    
    Radiowaves are basically a color of light that we can’t see. Technically “light” typically only refers to visible colors, and we call everything else “electromagnetic radiation”. Radio waves, microwaves, and infrared light are past the red end of the rainbow, while ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays are past the violet end of the rainbow. All of these are self-propagating ripples in electromagnetic fields.
    
    whether we actually consume or use the electrons themselves or simply reap the biproducts of some kind of manipulation that we do with them
    
    It’s very difficult to actually destroy an electron. When I said the electrons are “depleted” in a transistor I meant they are pushed somewhere else. Electrons can be pushed and pulled by electromagnetic fields, so in a transistor one current makes a field that pushes electrons out of the region where they would need to be for the other current to use them.
    
    In all cases it’s the electromagnetic fields that actually do the work.
    
    If you want to know about electrons actually being destroyed, an electron will annihilate with a positron (antimatter electron) releasing some gamma rays. There are some medical applications for radioactive material that produces positrons which annihilate to produce gamma rays in this way, and then they can detect the gamma rays.
    
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  - Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Everything is part of the EM (electromagnetic) spectrum - light, radio, microwaves (which were originally/still used for radio) etc.
    
    narodnatribuna.info/…/electromagnetic-spectrum-di…
    
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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Go to a library and ask the reference desk/research desk if they have any introductory textbooks on electrical engineering.

maybe also something more basic for general physics.

They’ll have something that fits your needs, or at least know where to find it.

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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  IN THIS ECONOMY?! /j
  
  Thanks! This has been on my mind for a long time, but at the moment, I’m learning how to program. I don’t know how to squeeze in yet another subject as a hobby project. 😅 Maybe when I get tired of programming.
  
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CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You’ll need to learn some quantum theory to really understand transistor since field effect can’t really be explained using other analogies.

Basically because there is water at a high height (high voltage), the height in another pipe changes: Without the water actually flowing through the pipe.

Transistor let you set voltages without passing current through (in the real world, there is current and thus heat being generated as waste, but it’s extremely small compared to the number of switching components there are).

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Quatlicopatlix@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Alpha phoenix youtube.com/@alphaphoenixchannel

Has some cool experiments on his channel that explain it a bit more, dont watch the vertasium videos they are kinda bad and misleading in my opinion.

As a electrical egineer i would just pick up a physics/ee book and try to read it and build up a understanding from the simple dc calculations to dc and field theory. The simplistic models make working with real problems easy so you ddont have to use differential equations for everything and think about fields etc for sumple circuits etc.

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- akunohana@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Thanks! Maybe I’ll take a break from programming and pick up an ee book! 😊
  
  Not to pick on them too much, but I have been deliberately avoiding Veritasium because he’s too “clickbaity”, showy and flashy. I’m not very comfortable with that.
  
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