: if you disconnect a power cable, where does the electricity that is still in the cable go?
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Electricity basically flows like water. If you have a hose full of water, and add a tiny bit at one end, a tiny bit comes out at the other end. The water that comes out, isn’t the same water that went in.
The same is true for wires. Put an electron in one end, and an electron comes out the other end. The electron that comes out isn’t the same one that went in.
Unplugging an extension cord, is like turning off the faucet of a hose. The water in the hose remains in the hose (ignoring the effects of gravity for this mind experiment). The same is true for wires. The electrons are all still in the wire and won’t move unless you add more electrons.
Electrons don’t actually flow through the wire in the way many people here have described. Veritasium has a great video explaining how it really works https://youtu.be/oI_X2cMHNe0 which adresses these common misconceptions. The answer to your question is nowhere. Electricity isn’t inside the wire like water in a hose.
It piles up in the cable until the repulsion of the electricity that’s already there is enough to push it back. That momentary packing-in of electricity is actually used intentionally in some devices to turn a little voltage into a big one, like a hydraulic ram pump but with electricity.
It piles up in the cable until the repulsion of the electricity that’s already there is enough to push it back. That momentary packing-in of electricity is actually used intentionally in some devices to turn a little voltage into a big one, like a hydraulic ram pump but with electricity.
It goes back to power station and spins generators a little faster. If enough people disconnect cables and not use electricity computers in power station will stop sending as much fuel to the generators so that they don’t spin too fast. Else the frequency in power grid will increase and god forsake clocks that rely on a stable grid frequency will start to run ahead.
Electricity isn’t electrons. It’s the *flow* of electrons.
When you turn off a tap, where does the water go? It’s sitting there in the pipe.
When you unplug a power cable, it’s still a metal wire (full of electrons), but they’re not moving (because there’s nowhere for them to go anymore) so there’s no electricity.
Electricity isn’t water. You’re not receiving a physical object. Electricity is energy.
The way it’s delivered is electrons jumping back and forth between neighbouring atoms. Think of it like dominoes. When you push a domino it’ll keep pushing the ones ahead of it, even though you only ever pushed the first one.
And what you get out pushing the dominoes isn’t extra dominoes, but a kinetic (physical) transfer of energy. Electricity works in much the same way. It’s just knocking existing electrons back and forth.
You could imagine electric attraction as being like turning on a conveyor belt in the wires that move the elections around the circuit, turn it off and the elections stop. This happens almost instantly if there is no connected source of charge.
What we call electricity is actually not an object that is present or located anywhere. Electricity is a flow or stream of electrons, that move in the same direction trough the cable. We can harness power from that flow like we can from a river.
When you disconnect a cable, the flow is stopped. The electrons stay in place.
Electricity travels at the speed of light, and alternates 50 times a second I assume as soon as you unplug the cord at light speed the speed you unplug the plug is a long time so based on how it alternates 50 times per second the electrons would flow back into the grid a long time after you would of unplugged that appliance
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