How does AC electricity transfer energy if the electrons just go back and forth, and don’t actually go anywhere?
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How do gears transfer power if they just go around in circles, and don’t actually go anywhere?
The electrons are what’s moving they energy, they aren’t the energy being moved. Even with DC, the energy travels near the speed of light, but the electrons themselves are rather slow. If you have 1A of current in a 1mm diameter wire, the speed of the actual electrons is only about 1cm/s.
If you have a stick, you can push it to transmit power through it, and you can pull it to transmit power through it. If you do one and then the other, you can still transmit two strokes worth of energy down the stick, with the stick ending up in the same place. A direct example of this is the pistons of a steam engine. You push on one side of the wheel, and then when it’s rotated 180 degrees you pull. So both times you make the wheel rotate the same direction, even though you’re pulling and then pushing. AC motors work the same way.
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