Analogical issue of battery terminals

Thread Starter

SwadhinM

Joined Jan 25, 2016
2
In this website, I found that it has taken the positive terminal of a battery to be accepting electrons and the negative terminal to be ejecting electrons in a circuit, whereas I have studied the opposite of this analogy. Is it the same? Please help. See screenshot.
 

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WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
So you have studied someplace that says that electrons leave the positive terminal and enter the negative terminal?

If that is what you believe, go back and restudy what they were saying. In particular, understand the distinction between charge and charge carriers in light of the fact that electrons are the charge carrier but that they carry a negative charge.
 

sailorjoe

Joined Jun 4, 2013
364
It's all in your point of view. As you know, electrons have a negative charge, therefore are attracted to positive potentials and repelled from negative potentials. This is the image in your attachment. The interesting thing is that "electrical current" can be considered as EITHER the movement of electrons, OR as the movement of the "holes" left behind as the electrons leave their atoms. The holes are positively charged so work opposite to electrons. All the formulas we use in electronics work correctly whether you choose to watch the electrons or the holes.
 

WBahn

Joined Mar 31, 2012
29,979
Note that the electron flow diagram makes the same common mistake that is almost always made by the electron flow community. The electrons move from negative to positive, but charge still moves from positive to negative. Charge is measured in coulombs -- even the electron flow crowd acknowledge this. The will also insist on measuring current in amperes, which is the flow of charge in the direction of the current. So if they have 1 A of current flowing they will claim that it is flowing from negative to positive, meaning that 1 coulomb of charge is flowing from negative to positive, meaning that after one second +1 C of charge will flow into the positive terminal. But in fact -1 C of charge has flowed into that terminal, a point which they will readily acknowledge, however they are only able to reconcile the two by judicious application of magical mystery minus signs. The reason is that the know what is going on -- that's no the problem -- but their mathematical model is internally inconsistent and so they have to map it back to reality with "glue math".
 
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