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Do we use the EFFECTS of electron flow, NOT "electricity"?
(piefed.blahaj.zone)
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this post was submitted on 23 May 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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Radiowaves are a color of light that we can’t see. Technically “light” typically only refers to visible colors, and we call everything else “electromagnetic radiation”. Radio waves, microwaves, and infrared light are past the red end of the rainbow, while ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays are past the violet end of the rainbow. All of these are self-propagating ripples in electromagnetic fields.
It’s very difficult to actually destroy an electron. When I said the electrons are “depleted” in a transistor I meant they are pushed somewhere else. Electrons can be pushed and pulled by electromagnetic fields, so in a transistor one current makes a field that pushes electrons out of the region where they would need to be for the other current to use them.
In all cases it’s the electromagnetic fields that actually do the work.
If you want to know about electrons actually being destroyed, an electron will annihilate with a positron (antimatter electron) releasing some gamma rays. There are some medical applications for radioactive material that produces positrons which annihilate to produce gamma rays in this way, and then they can detect the gamma rays.
Thanks for all the clarifications! It's mindboggling and fascinating how we found out about all this, came up with concepts and pointers - language - to express and describe it all.
If you ever have the chance to take a college physics class, they often teach some of the history of how this stuff was discovered along with the math. I always found that part fascinating!
Also there are some pretty good resources on YouTube and some books intended for more casual audiences. Michio Kaku was one of my favorite authors for pop-sci physics when I was a kid.
For the fundamental concepts of electromagnetism, see 'Maxwell's Equations'. Personally, I prefer looking at the differential equation versions to understand the interplay between electro- and -magnetism and how that relates to light/electricity/so many things