# How does electricity work exactly? [closed]

So it just isn't popping for me how electricity actually works.

AC at 60 Hz can swap directions 60 times a second and drift at roughly 1 m/s while they kind of ping pong forward with constant push from a power source and an attraction to the positive side/protons. But if AC switches flow direction 60 times a second and the electrons only move 1 m/s how do the electrons not lose power after doing work on a load and are able to just go back and forth through a conductor and keep doing work?

And the electrons wouldn't even have enough time to move forward or backwards in a circuit they would be pretty much stuck in place just kind of vibrating back and forth never actually moving through a circuit.

• most of this has already been answered here. – niels nielsen Jan 16 at 0:00
• If I take hold of one end of a long rope and wave it up and down, I can send a wave along the rope, which carries energy from me to the other end of the rope, even though none of the molecules in the rope move lengthwise along the rope. – The Photon Jan 16 at 0:07
• Electrons are nowhere near the speed of light, even in free space; electrons have mass. Also, electrons don't do any work, forces do work. – FGSUZ Jan 16 at 0:23
• I'm voting to close this because it is all over the place, making it impossible to coherently respond to each point. – Bob D Jan 16 at 0:36
• I trimmed it down a bit although I didn’t think it was that unclear – Dale Jan 16 at 1:45

So where does this mistaken notion come from? Basically, in circuit theory electrical power is given by $$P=IV$$. Taken at face value it seems that the power is carried in the current. Since the current is made of electrons it seems plausible that the power is carried on the electrons. However, that is wrong for an important reason. The power equation gives the amount of power, but says nothing about where it is transferred. Indeed, circuit theory cannot say anything about the location of the energy transfer as all position information has been abstracted out of circuit theory. To get information about the location requires a theory that uses position: Maxwell’s equations.