amperes is not a measurement of charge.

If you meant -15 coulombs, then how did you manage to multiply (+5 amperes), which is (+5 coulombs per second), and (+3 seconds), and end up with (-15 coulombs)?

Simple. You used a magical mystery minus sign to force the answer to end up with the sign you knew it needed to be. You had to do this because the system you set up by failing to distinguish the difference between the flow of charge carriers and the flow of the charge that is carried resulted in an inconsistent system that then has to rely on handwaving and magic to get correct answers.

But congratulations, because you are the first person to actually give a direct answer to that trivially simple question.

- I wrote what I wrote, period. But if I where to put a sign in front of the 15 it would be a + . Becauuuuuse, of 2 reasons:

1) + 5 of x real object lxl + 3 of y real object = + 15.
2) Ever since I started learning more and more of this for reasons mentioned in #135, in academic and instructional articles when it came to the point of adding, multiplying, subtracting, and dividing charge from point A to B through a wire from a DC power source, THAT is how they communicated it to me. That's it. It's not from my mental preference or attempted mental working to put that + sign. Which brings us back to why the original post was made and the current dialogue about what REALLY is Electric Current.

Your example:
If 5 amperes of electron current flowed through a wire into a sphere for 3 seconds then because of what I was taught I would say the sphere had + 15 amps but in my mind would think " Isn't it - 15 amps because the electrons carried their - charge over there ".

 

- I wrote what I wrote, period. But if I where to put a sign in front of the 15 it would be a + . Becauuuuuse, of 2 reasons:

1) + 5 of x real object lxl + 3 of y real object = + 15.
2) Ever since I started learning more and more of this for reasons mentioned in #135, in academic and instructional articles when it came to the point of adding, multiplying, subtracting, and dividing charge from point A to B through a wire from a DC power source, THAT is how they communicated it to me. That's it. It's not from my mental preference or attempted mental working to put that + sign. Which brings us back to why the original post was made and the current dialogue about what REALLY is Electric Current.

Your example:
If 5 amperes of electron current flowed through a wire into a sphere for 3 seconds then because of what I was taught I would say the sphere had + 15 amps but in my mind would think " Isn't it - 15 amps because the electrons carried their - charge over there ".

You will never be able to understand any of this until you get it straight that "amps" is NOT a measure of charge. It is the rate of flow of charge. This is exactly analogous to saying that the distance from here to the city limits is 15 miles per hour or that that you your gas tank holds 50 gallons per minute of fuel.

And the charge on that sphere is either +15 coulombs or -15 coulombs. Which is it? Saying that you were taught this but think that doesn't cut it. It is one or the other. Which do you believe it is? Is it positively charged or is it negatively charged?

 

You will never be able to understand any of this until you get it straight that "amps" is NOT a measure of charge. It is the rate of flow of charge. This is exactly analogous to saying that the distance from here to the city limits is 15 miles per hour or that that you your gas tank holds 50 gallons per minute of fuel.

And the charge on that sphere is either +15 coulombs or -15 coulombs. Which is it? Saying that you were taught this but think that doesn't cut it. It is one or the other. Which do you believe it is? Is it positively charged or is it negatively charged?

- Electrons hold/carry a - charge, so I believe the sphere got negatively ( - ) charged.
am I wrong or right.

 

You are right that the sphere is negatively charged, and you are right for the right reason, namely that the electrons that were flowing onto it are negatively charged.

But if you say that the current flowing in the direction of the electrons was +5 A, then the only way you were able to get the correct answer of -15 C of charge was to invoke a magical mystery minus sign.

So let's figure out what the electrical current that resulted in that charge had to be.

We deposited -15 C of charge in 3 seconds. So the current was

\(
I \; = \; \frac{-15 \, C}{3 \, s} \; = \; -5 \, \frac{C}{s} \; = \; -5 \, A
\)

So the current flowing in the direction of the electrons was -5 A.

 

You are right that the sphere is negatively charged, and you are right for the right reason, namely that the electrons that were flowing onto it are negatively charged.

But if you say that the current flowing in the direction of the electrons was +5 A, then the only way you were able to get the correct answer of -15 C of charge was to invoke a magical mystery minus sign.

So let's figure out what the electrical current that resulted in that charge had to be.

We deposited -15 C of charge in 3 seconds. So the current was

\(
I \; = \; \frac{-15 \, C}{3 \, s} \; = \; -5 \, \frac{C}{s} \; = \; -5 \, A
\)

So the current flowing in the direction of the electrons was -5 A.

- I see nothing wrong with what you just said.

 

- I see nothing wrong with what you just said.

Good. We're making progress.

 

Good. We're making progress.

- So why isn't saying electron current the same as electric current!
you need electrons to carry electric charge in the wire from black to red, etc.
- or + charge is irrelevant, right. It's doing all the running around, so why not call it the ELECTRIC CURRENT.
what am I missing here.

 

- So why isn't saying electron current the same as electric current!
you need electrons to carry electric charge in the wire from black to red, etc.
- or + charge is irrelevant, right. It's doing all the running around, so why not call it the ELECTRIC CURRENT.
what am I missing here.

I don't know how many different ways to explain it.

An electron is like a UPS truck that is delivering widgets to a factory with each truck carrying 500 widgets. You can talk about 20 trucks/day going into the factory or you can talk about 10,000 widgets/day going into the factory. These both convey the same amount of information. But do you see that they are NOT the same thing?

Now let's say that we use widgets/day so often that we want to give it a special name and call 1 widget/day a flintstone, in honor of the founder of the factory. So we have 20 trucks/day or we have 1000 flintstones. These are NOT the same thing.

The truck is a carrier and we can describe the delivery "current" in trucks/day. But what we are really interested in is what the trucks carry, which are widgets. The widget current has units of widgets/day, or flintstones. In the case above, there are widgets/truck and that is the conversion factor between trucks/day and flintstones. Namely:

X = 20 trucks/day * 500 widgets/truck = 1000 widgets/day = 1000 flintstones.

Now let's say that things slow down but that we still have 20 trucks/day but each truck is carrying only one widget.

X = 20 trucks/day * 1 widgets/truck = 20 widgets/day = 20 flintstones.

Even though each carrier only carries one item in which we are interested, it is still the case that "truck current", in trucks/day, is NOT the same things as "widget current", in flintstones. The fact that the numerical part has the same value does not make them the same. 1 desk is not the same as 1 chair despite the fact that both quantities have a numerical value of 1.

The same is true for electrons that carry electrical charge. And ampere is NOT a measure of the flow of electrons, it is a measure of the flow of electrical charge. The amount of electrical charge carried by an electron happens to be -1.602E-19 C/e-.

That negative sign is not ignorable. It is, in fact, critical to making the system consistent.

One thing to keep in mind is that wires using electrons as carries are not the only means of creating an electrical current. We have a stream of protons. Each proton has a positive amount of charge.

So if we have a system that had both a proton beam and an electron beam impinging on our sphere with the same number of charge carries per second in each beam, then the total current impinging on the sphere would be zero even though both particle currents (carrier currents) are positive because the electric current from the electron beam would be negative and the electric current from the proton beam would be positive by the same magnitude.

 

BTW, current doesn't care what color the wire insulation is.

 

BTW, current doesn't care what color the wire insulation is.

????

 

This thread may be the silliest one I've ever read here. That's a high bar. The one with over 1000 posts about the weather makes more sense than this one.

In metal conductors and most electronic devices, current flows in the opposite direction that electrons move, by arbitrary convention. Done.

Why do we need 150 posts to establish something so simple?

 

Electricity has a broader scope than the technology of electronics. If electron flow was defined as electrical current for some odd reason today the need for defining a system of conventional current consistent with other physics would be the same. The definition of electric current is compatible with the other physical phenomena of charge carrier movements so when you move from strictly electron flow the models of energy 'flow' still work.

Say you have a bucket of ice water and a warm bar. Place one end of the bar in the ice bucket and view the bar with a Thermal Imager.

We could say cold is rising up the bar from the ice into the metal. That seems OK at first, of course it exists. Have you never been cold? But cold is really the absence of heat. Heat is leaving the bar and going into the ice water under any and all combinations of charges and particles. So there is no cold moving up, only heat moving down even if we see 'cold' moving up with the Imager in this analogy to the conventional current direction as the heat flow in a physical system.

When we have programs that model physical systems like MathWorks they all have electrical/mechanical conventions that are designed to have direction of variables to model energy 'flow' directions.

http://www.mathworks.com/help/physm...-of-modeling-physical-networks.html#bq89sba-5

 

This thread may be the silliest one I've ever read here. That's a high bar. The one with over 1000 posts about the weather makes more sense than this one.

In metal conductors and most electronic devices, current flows in the opposite direction that electrons move, by arbitrary convention. Done.

Why do we need 150 posts to establish something so simple?

Because there are lots of people (within the silly thread) that, no matter how often and how many ways it is explained, still insist that charge flows in the same direction as the electrons do (despite having to use magical mystery minus signs right and left as a consequence).

 

Post #147
Wbahn in response to ???

you need electrons to carry electric charge in the wire from black to red, etc.

 

Ah.... I see (said the blind man as he walked into a tree).

 

Why do we need 150 posts to establish something so simple?

Which is why I asked the question "is this billymayo?" And what does the answer to it have to do with the TS's "survival?"

 

This thread may be the silliest one I've ever read here.

Oh, I dunno 'bout that; I reckon if you took a poll, you could get dozens-- maybe hundreds-- of nominations for "Most Idiotic AAC Thread Ever."

Why do we need 150 posts to establish something so simple?

Because it's the Internet. It's what we do. Interminable "death-match debates" that go on and on until one party simply gives up out of frustration or exhaustion are as common as dirt and are a revered tradition.

My preferred course of action: open a beer and make some popcorn. Life is good.

 

Oh, I dunno 'bout that; I reckon if you took a poll, you could get dozens-- maybe hundreds-- of nominations for "Most Idiotic AAC Thread Ever."

I have a small boat and joined a forum of owners to pick up maintenance tips and so on. One of my all-time favorite threads there was the one on "stupid things I've done or seen while boating". I laughed so hard I cried at some of the stories. Maybe we need a thread like that here. Identifying idiotic threads might be a little too personal.

 

We can produce two polarities of potential.

But we can only produce one polarity of current. All coulomb movement and therefore all current has a negative charge. A negative current can produce both polarities of potential.

If you insist on carrying the polarity of the coulomb in the equation, ALL electrical current and All electrical power must be labeled as negative.

If you insist on the proper math, then I insist on the proper and real dynamic.

And believe it or not, the FACT the we can only produce one polarity of current is the very reason that we can use electricity.

Electricity can not exist with two polarities of charge flow.

Not only is positive charge flow NOT real, it's that teaching and promotion causes all the misery and suffering in the world. That's been mathematically proven by the way. Without a minus sign.

Our children deserve to be protected from that perverse minus sign at all cost, even if we hide the truth from them.

It is now easier to get the truth out of a politician, than an academic.

 

We can produce two polarities of potential.

But we can only produce one polarity of current. All coulomb movement and therefore all current has a negative charge. A negative current can produce both polarities of potential.

So you've never heard of ion solutions or beams?

If you insist on carrying the polarity of the coulomb in the equation, ALL electrical current and All electrical power must be labeled as negative.

If you put the arrow the other direction == regardless of which convention you are using or what the quantity represents -- then you multiply the value by -1. Thus you turn the negative quantity into a positive quantity. If you want, you can think of it as -(-15 A).

If you insist on the proper math, then I insist on the proper and real dynamic.

And believe it or not, the FACT the we can only produce one polarity of current is the very reason that we can use electricity.

Electricity can not exist with two polarities of charge flow.

Not only is positive charge flow NOT real, it's that teaching and promotion causes all the misery and suffering in the world. That's been mathematically proven by the way. Without a minus sign.

Our children deserve to be protected from that perverse minus sign at all cost, even if we hide the truth from them.

It is now easier to get the truth out of a politician, than an academic.

More babble.