Eli5: Why do we define current as the rate of flow of charges and not rate of flow of electron?

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Since current caused by the movement of electrons in the wire so shouldn’t current be define rate of flow of electron?

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I am going way back in my memory, as I no longer work in electronics, and college was a long time ago.

As I recall, a single electron moving between atoms is actually quite slow. An electron entering a wire from a battery and travelling to the other end of a wire can be measured in seconds or minutes. However, as it moves along, it pushes the electrons in front of it, and it is the charges that we detect moving at nearly light speed. Kinda like a hose. The water entering one end of a hose can take some time to finally come out the other end, but as soon as you turn the water on, it starts coming out the end of the hose almost immediately, because it is being pushed along by the water entering at the other end.

I stand to be corrected by anyone with knowledge obtained from this century.

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