The entire universe is one single immensely complex circuit. There are no conductors or insulators, just one giant RLC network. This is a perfectly valid, yet extraordinarily pedantic way of viewing electronics (unless you're one of the dark wizards of RF).
The battery in your cell phone right now is in some non-zero way also powering the lights in your room. Each keypress on your keyboard registers in the heater of your neighbors coffee machine. They're all part of the same singular universal circuit.
Veritasium just ran with this pedantic tidbit to make a flashy controversial video. Which he didn't even get fully right because like Electro pointed out, there is always non-zero current flowing in everything. The lamp never "turns on" because it always was "on".
As an electronics guy, the veritasium video just made my eyes roll.
We live in an electromagnetic world. You can blow minds even in educated circles when you explain that most physical forces are just electrical repulsion. Dark matter is then just matter that doesn’t interact too much with electromagnetic fields.
also the part about how alternating current should push energy and pull energy with the electrons-as-chain model given that it is perfectly possible to use alternating motion as source of energy (eg the pistons of an internal combustion engine)
should i watch the veritasium video and then this correction or just keep my ignorant/old-fashioned way of thinking about electrons and electrons holes switching places
btw my favorite, most illuminating source of electrical knowledge is the book “There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings”
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 13.3 ms ] threadThe battery in your cell phone right now is in some non-zero way also powering the lights in your room. Each keypress on your keyboard registers in the heater of your neighbors coffee machine. They're all part of the same singular universal circuit.
Veritasium just ran with this pedantic tidbit to make a flashy controversial video. Which he didn't even get fully right because like Electro pointed out, there is always non-zero current flowing in everything. The lamp never "turns on" because it always was "on".
As an electronics guy, the veritasium video just made my eyes roll.
https://youtu.be/ovJcsL7vyrk
btw my favorite, most illuminating source of electrical knowledge is the book “There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings”