9k views

### Is electricity really the flow of electrons or is it more involved?

I am new to the physics category of the Stack Exchange site. I apologize if my question is wrong, too broad, simple, or worded incorrectly. I am just trying to figure out what is true and false when ...
7k views

### In what order would light bulbs in series light up when you close a long circuit?

For a few days, I was thinking of this question. Lets assume we have a simple circuit that is 100 meters long. And lets say that we have bulbs A, B and C connected to the circuit's 30th, 60th and ...
7k views

### Is every open circuit a capacitor?

I think that even open-ended wires can let AC current flow through them, just with a low capacitance. I also think an antenna could be a capacitor and open ended. Am I thinking correctly?
439 views

### In a simple battery + resistor circuit, what form of energy is lost from the electrons upon exiting the resistor?

I will give this question a little context. Firstly, as I understand it, as soon as I "close the switch" on a circuit, electric current pretty quickly establishes a steady state where, at any given ...
806 views

### When talking about potential difference in a circuit, whose work done are we talking about?

I'm asking this because it seems to me that when we talk about PD around a charge (i.e. potential difference between infinity and a point), we're talking about the work done per unit charge by an ...
735 views

### What is the exact mechanism of flow of electricity? [duplicate]

When a steady current flows through a conductor, the electrons in it move with a certain average ‘drift speed’. One can calculate this drift speed of electrons for a typical copper wire carrying a ...
600 views

### How can a current carrying wire be electrically neutral if the wire at rest is already electrically neutral? (relativistically speaking)

I am stationary with respect to a conducting wire This conducting wire is electrically neutral (From observation) Current is now made to move within this wire. The motion of charges will be seen ...
272 views

Consider the simple case of a battery in series with a resistor, mediated by conducting wire. At steady state, the charge carriers are circulating around the circuit at constant speed through the ...
508 views

### Distance moved by a point on a rubber band when the band is stretched

Take a rubber band of length $l$ and mark a point $(\cdot)$ on it at $x^{th}$ distance assuming the elastic rubber band to be along the $x$ axis beginning from $x=0$. My main query is: when the band ...
210 views

### Why is it often assumed that parasitic (or "stray") capacitance is in parallel?

Consider a simple RC circuit operating in the DC regime. Depending on the specifics of the experimental setup, there can often be a significant amount of parasitic (or "stray") capacitance. In every ...
56 views

### Can electron concentration vary in computer circuits?

I'm currently reading Frank Wilczek's new book Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality and I've come across the following passage: Inside modern computers, information is stored and processed in ...