What is the direction of electric current in a simple circuit?
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at
9:33 pm
Lioric asked:
Electricity is defined as ‘ a flow of electrons’
so wouldn’t electrons flow from negative terminal to positive terminal in a battery?
Tagged with: Current Electricity • Direction • Flow Of Electrons
Filed under: Engineering
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sussex electrician
You’re correct, but this answer is backwards for historical reasons. It’s been suggested a few times in the past to flip the signs, but really people just know it the way it is and understand that. It;s really a minor technical arbitrary inconsistency problem.
brighton electrical
Ok in real life the electrons flow from the negative to the positive terminal. Back when electronics was getting started it seemed logical that electrons flowed from the positive to the negative. The logic was that there is a high level of energy and this energy fell to the negative. That’s why when you look at schematics you always see the positive terminals on the top as the negative terminals on the bottom. When doing math for circuits it doesn’t matter which way you go as long as you go one way. Some times to check myself I go both ways. Because of the history they kept the positive to negative in books. But if this is for chemistry then the electrons go negative to positive.
sussex electrics
You are correct in your statement that electrons flow from the negative to the positive terminal of a battery. It’s just that “current”, as historically defined, flows in the opposite direction of the electron flow.
The problem that occurred was that, at the time electricity was first being studied, no one knew about electrons or even atoms. All that they could see was the results. So, it was a 50-50 proposition as to whether current would be defined by the flow of electrons or the mysterious flow of positive charges, which we now know don’t really move at all. They called “heads” and the coin toss came up tails. Just a bit o bad luck.