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What have you learned recently? Which rabbit hole have you been digging into?
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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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I thought electricity was just a stream of electrons flowing in one direction like a provoked stampede.
Did Bill Nye lie to me?
Yes he did. Its the holes. The holes move.
But beyond circuits I, the OC is right. It quickly gets into field theory, where electricity in wires is just a special case.
its 100% in any meaningful sense of the word move the electrons that move, but thanks to ol' benny franks we have an ass-backwards roundabout way of describing the relative motion of stationary proton "holes" compared to electrons which are- well, more teleporting than moving, frequently (if you'll pardon the pun). holes move in the same way that water pressure is analogous to voltage: there may be mathematical and maybe even some physical comparisons to be made, but the conceptual framework is fundamentally an analogy, and in the case of "hole flow" a fudged up cya excuse for not updating the damn convention when the mistake was discovered. hurrumph.
holes flowing... protons with free motion? in a solid wire or semiconductor? you mean a plasma.
is there a physical constraint one could apply to matter to cause "holes" to flow while electrons stay put?
Bill Nye was describing a direct current (DC). But most houses use alternating current. With an alternating current (AC), the electrons are jutting back and forth rapidly rather than flowing in one direction, and the rate of this depends on the Hz (frequency)!