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Floris
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One way to look at current is "the total number of electrons passing a particular plane per unit time, multiplied by their charge".

How fast they are going doesn't matter - if they are going faster, they will appear to be further apart.

A given amount of light (above the critical frequency) will knock a given number of photo-electrons into space. That is the number of electrons that flows - and regardless of their velocity, they will give rise to the same current.

If you had a constant space density of charge, then making that cloud of electrons move faster would increase the current. But that is not what you have here - you have a fixed number, not a fixed density.

Imagine cars sitting in a traffic jam. Perhaps the four lane highway reduced to a single lane. And let's imagine one car per second passes a given point. Maybe the car is doing 10 km/h. Now we look five km "downstream". The road is 4 lanes wide again, and cars are going 120 km/h. How many cars per second do you see passing you? Of course it is one car per second - that's the number that was going through the narrow point. So although the cars are now going much faster, the road is still transporting the same number of cars. The cars are much further apart. If somehow everyone in the traffic jam (with the cars bumper-to-bumper) figured out how to drive really fast at the same time, the number of cars per second (the "current") would be much greater.

One way to look at current is "the total number of electrons passing a particular plane per unit time, multiplied by their charge".

How fast they are going doesn't matter - if they are going faster, they will appear to be further apart.

A given amount of light (above the critical frequency) will knock a given number of photo-electrons into space. That is the number of electrons that flows - and regardless of their velocity, they will give rise to the same current.

If you had a constant space density of charge, then making that cloud of electrons move faster would increase the current. But that is not what you have here - you have a fixed number, not a fixed density.

One way to look at current is "the total number of electrons passing a particular plane per unit time, multiplied by their charge".

How fast they are going doesn't matter - if they are going faster, they will appear to be further apart.

A given amount of light (above the critical frequency) will knock a given number of photo-electrons into space. That is the number of electrons that flows - and regardless of their velocity, they will give rise to the same current.

If you had a constant space density of charge, then making that cloud of electrons move faster would increase the current. But that is not what you have here - you have a fixed number, not a fixed density.

Imagine cars sitting in a traffic jam. Perhaps the four lane highway reduced to a single lane. And let's imagine one car per second passes a given point. Maybe the car is doing 10 km/h. Now we look five km "downstream". The road is 4 lanes wide again, and cars are going 120 km/h. How many cars per second do you see passing you? Of course it is one car per second - that's the number that was going through the narrow point. So although the cars are now going much faster, the road is still transporting the same number of cars. The cars are much further apart. If somehow everyone in the traffic jam (with the cars bumper-to-bumper) figured out how to drive really fast at the same time, the number of cars per second (the "current") would be much greater.

Source Link
Floris
  • 119.4k
  • 13
  • 224
  • 406

One way to look at current is "the total number of electrons passing a particular plane per unit time, multiplied by their charge".

How fast they are going doesn't matter - if they are going faster, they will appear to be further apart.

A given amount of light (above the critical frequency) will knock a given number of photo-electrons into space. That is the number of electrons that flows - and regardless of their velocity, they will give rise to the same current.

If you had a constant space density of charge, then making that cloud of electrons move faster would increase the current. But that is not what you have here - you have a fixed number, not a fixed density.