So a generator is magnets and copper coil yeah? They make electricity and electricity is moving electrons. Power generators and electric stations are kilometres away. Do the copper coils get their electrons back?
Won’t the copper coil run out of electrons. How the electrons come back (if they do)?
In: 117
Essentially, the electrons do come back, yes. That’s why you need to have a “circuit”, they need a path back to the beginning.
The reason it works is because it’s actually the field formed by the electrons which carries energy through the circuit. So the electrons come back, but leave the energy behind (in your toaster, TV, whatever).
That’s the ELI5 answer, but in reality it would be unlikely any single electron actually “travels” the entire circuit. For example, if you tie 2 wires together, electrons don’t flow from one wire into the other (edit: but they still flow through *each* wire, u/Stargate_1), what actually happens is the electrons in one wire transfer energy to the electrons in the other. This gets more complicated when we introduce other electric devices, like capacitors and semiconductors, where the charge flowing may not be electrons at all.
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