For example, I was listening to a podcast about hydropower, and the mentioned that the water current does what it does, and shakes these electrons free and that creates electricity, but do the h2o molecules lose an electron, or are there just a ton of free roaming electrons out I’m the world. I have no clue how it all works, do maybe my assumptions are all wrong, Thanks in advance!
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First, it’s interesting to note that electricity is the flow of charged particles. That means electric current isn’t limited to the flow of electrons but can be protons or other ions as well. However, to answer your question specifically, we need to understand a few basic principles.
We know that electrons are negative, and protons are positive, and that like charges repel and unlike charges attract. The strength of the attraction or repulsion is governed, in part, by the distance between those two charges, as shown by Coulombs law. The relationship is such that the closer the particles the greater the force, and vice versa. We also know that electrons like to arrange themselves into orbital shells. For the sake of simplicity, let’s imagine these orbital shells as rings around the nucleus, similar to how planets orbit the Sun in our solar system. These rings can each hold a certain number of electrons (it’s 2(n^2)), with n being the ring number, such that ring 1 can hold 2 electrons, ring 2 can hold 8, ring 3 can hold 18, ring 4 can hold 32, and so on. The outermost ring is known as the valence shell, and atoms prefer to have full valence shells. And if you think about it, today is April Fools day.
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