Any person that cannot believe in God surely is suffering from delusions placed in their head by a misconception that Man's knowledge is divine. It is like thinking the sun rotates around the earth. So I presume, you have seen an electron and know why current flows. I presume you think cause and effect, and an end and beginning are part of all processes. I presume that your thinking is inside the box created by empiricists and you simply cannot crawl out from under the weight of years of rational concrete thinking. You are programmed.
No one yet can explain why current flows. Try a Fourier heat flow equation. The Mechanical people figured it out long before Charles Ohm. Ohms simply copied the heat flow equation. Ohms' law should be called Fourier's law.
Man has learned how to gather an excess of electrons such that given a load (conduction path, dipshit), said electrons will flow until balance is established between the storage medium and ground, or the return of an isolated storage medium. Such differences are ALWAYS with respect to ground or a pseudo-ground within the device itself. The mechanism is electrostatic pressure. When one strips the electrons away from a lattice, there is a huge attraction developed in that medium. That difference is referred to by those of us with a grasp of this realm, as Electromotive Force.
In man's control of this, we are able to gather continuous streams of electrons and HUGE differences between said sources and ground or 'returns'. In such cases, we are able to utilize the continuous stream such that we do not even refer to it as being electrostatic any longer because we can make HUGE amounts available, which the electrostatic world does not get far. Even something as large as a lighting bolt cannot perform much work in our continuous realm, but the instantaneous work performed was fairly great... for a lightning bolt. We, however, need a LOT more force for a much longer duration.
So, if you have no grasp of the four forces, which it is fairly obvious that you do not, you will not have any inkling of what is taking place. Essentially, you display a glaring lack of aptitude for this particular science.
If there were no gravity our universe would be really messy. So why is there this attraction between bodies of matter? Why do so called electron shells not quite full exert attraction for that extra electron? And back to the beginning, why does current flow? Many systems are based on assumptions that have no explanations. No one here can answer these simple questions. Oh yes you can describe mathematical models that describe how they work, but still cannot tell us why they work. So God is the answer and no one here can prove there is no God. Nor can anyone answer where God came from, or where where ever he may have come from, came from, etc. The only answer is there was no beginning and no end. God, energy and matter that makes up this universe have always been here. The beginning connects to the end. Our feeble minds have to climb outside the box and accept an entirely new perception of time and space to accept a concept of no beginning and no end and the infinite presence of matter, energy, and God. As can be seen here this concept is confusing and angers the empiricists. It challenges their self esteem and forces them to a humbly accept that they are just plain stupid.
It's been a long time since I had basic engineering classes, so I jump in here perhaps imprudently, but I think you have to open your physics book to properly discuss this matter.
Anyway, an electric field moves the electrons (or ions), and that movement of charge is commonly defined as electric current (I=Q/t).
But it's really about the electric field. For example, electrons move very slowly in a wire, far below the large fraction of light speed at which electrical energy travels down a wire, so clearly it's the electric field that is being propagated that constitutes what electricity 'really is', with the electrons merely being electric field carriers.
This becomes more obvious when you consider electromagnetic radiation, where the energy is transmitted entirely by the e-m fields themselves, without any electron or ion carrier involved at all.
I could put up the equations for this if I remembered them, but its been a while. I'm pretty sure they're still in those text books I had, available for the idly curious.
Maybe there's someone watching this thread that is actually qualified to discuss this properly (no not most of you). If so perhaps you might enlighten us with the proper perspective on all this???
Although I detest the reliance upon electrons for describing circuit behavior for the most part, the understanding of behavior can help understand some processes. Note, the presumption of moving electrons in a conductor IS UNNECESSARY TO determine CIRCUIT behavior in most cases. Use v=-L*di/dt, i=C*dv/dt, and mv=i*R appropriately, and electrons will have nothing to do with it.
If you must invoke electrons for religious motivations, then an electric field is NOT necessary to keep electrons moving in a conductor. Electric field is needed to ACCELERATE electrons. As their speed build up, electrons will bump into lattice defects such as impurities, dislocations and thermal vibrations (phonons). This causes the electrons to give up energy and slow down. Electric field then accelerates electrons again. These processes describe the source of resistance in electrical materials.
But the electric wave itself is being caused by the electrons in the waveguide!
Electrons in the upstream part of the waveguide surfaces are producing fields, and those fields travel along to cause the electrons further downstream to bunch up, which produces fields too. Electrons act sort of like dominoes, but they communicate forces via their electrostatic fields rather than via direct contact. Don't forget that, if there were no movable electrons in the waveguide (if it was insulating,) then this "domino effect" would be gone, and there would be no guided waves.
The usual analogy for a conductor is a pipe full of beads. If you move one bead, it pushes on the next, which pushes on the next, and a wave moves along the column of beads. (That wave's a sound wave. That's what sound waves *are.*)
So ask yourself this: are the beads being moved by upstream beads... OR are they actually being dragged by the sound wave? The answer is ...yes! The sound wave is just one bead pushing upon the next one in line. And when one bead pushes on another, the name for that is "sound wave."
In a waveguide (and in any conductor,) the guided waves are really just the fields of upstream electrons causing downstream electrons to move and bunch together. And then the fields of those bunched electrons in turn will affect the electrons further downstream. The only big difference between this and a row of plastic spheres is that, with EM fields, one electron can push on all the surrounding electrons, and not just the nearest neighbor. (Of course it does push more weakly on the more distant ones.)
Here's another way to say it: electromagnetic waves can move through space as spreading ripples. But if you provide a long column of movable electrons, those electrons can guide the wave, because the first electron responds to the wave and generates a changing e-field, which pushes on the next electron, and so on. When this occurs, the original spreading ripple has been cancelled out, and it's replaced by a ripple which is moving along the column of electrons.
Odd trivia: EM waves cannot travel through tiny holes in conductive walls which are far smaller than the spacing between wave crests. However, if an EM wave is being guided by the column of electrons inside wire, then the wave can travel through a hole of any size. (You can drill a hole in your microwave oven and no RF will leak out. But don't ever stick a piece of metal coathanger into that hole, or you'll get a painful surprise!)
The only way to create the fields and waves in the first place is to drag charges along.
Back during a science museum exhibit project I gathered a stack of textbooks and started collecting the electricity errors and misconceptions being spread by the books. See
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Since that time I've written a bunch of articles which "re-explains" electricity from the ground up, with the common widespread misconceptions removed. See:
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Note that these articles really need some diagrams, and even some animations. Right now they're just all text.
((((((((((((((((((((((( ( ( (o) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty Research Engineer beaty a chem washington edu UW Chem Dept, Bagley Hall RM74 billb a eskimo com Box 351700, Seattle, WA 98195-1700 ph206-762-3818
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