What makes electricity want to move? And when it does, is it the same electrons along the way? Or is it pushing electrons out of atoms in like a domino effect?
In: Physics
Whole lotta posts and few come close to ELI5, likely coz electricity is some weord dark magic shit. Here’s my attempt.
Electricity is what happens when electrons move in one of two ways – jiggling or flowing.
Both of those involve electrons jumping between atoms. I won’t get too far into the specifics there, suffice it to say that for some atoms, the outer electrons can jump ship, but doing so leaves a nice lil hole for a new electron to slip into.
Jiggly electricity is called Alternating Current. That’s when the electrons are going back and forth between the same atoms.
Flowing electricity is called Direct Current. That’s when the electrons are zipping around a circuit. Sidenote, a circuit means that it’s a closed loop, so the eelectrons will inevitably end up back where they started eventually.
The important thing for your second question regarding mass is that at no point in either of those procedures are new electrons added to the circuit, so no new mass is added.
So, while it’s true electrons have mass, you’re not gonna make something lighter by switching the power off.
(there are some edge cases to this, like capacitance, whoch is ebyond the scope of ELI5)
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