How does electricity get stored ? How does it move down a cable? And will I slow it down if the cable is curved or bent (the way water will in a hose)

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How does electricity get stored ? How does it move down a cable? And will I slow it down if the cable is curved or bent (the way water will in a hose)

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Electricity is commonly stored chemically by using the bonds between atoms in a molecule. Breaking the bond releases one or more electrons which is a force-carrier for electric charge. When recharging a battery, the atoms are joined back together. This isn’t the only way, though, there are also heat-based and gravity-based ways to store electricity, but they are much less common.

Electricity moves along a conductor when there is a difference in electric charge — one end is less negative than the other. In reality, it is actually the holes that move in the opposite direction and the result is more balanced electric potential along the ends, but it is usually easier to reason about a circuit in terms of the electric charge moving from high electric to low electric potential.

You won’t noticeably slow it down if you bend the cable. Technically, electric charge does gather at bends more than it does along a straight wire, but at the scale that power cables operate it isn’t really noticeable. When designing circuits at the scale of CPU chips where wires are very very narrow it is something to take into account, but you won’t ever cut off a circuit by bending the power cable like a garden hose. You do have to be careful about bending too much or too often as this can cause physical wear, possibly stripping the insulation around the wire or causing it to separate (especially near the connector). This is why a lot of cables have extra rubber or plastic where it terminates, to help prevent it from being bent so much that it pulls apart.

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