My New View of Electricity and Electrons

Before I went to college I spent 2 years as an apprentice electrician in both residential and commercial wiring. This, plus an early and continuous interest in electronics, I thought I had a good grasp of what electricity was. Only in the last few months in the autumn of my years do I learn that my understanding was just the Dr Seuss version taught in high school.

I sat fat and happy thinking electrical current flowed like water through a pipe. Well, it does not. Wires guide an electric field over the surface of the conductor, moving each electron a tiny distance. The field carries the energy.

A similar situation applies to an electron which, by the way, has no measurable size. There is only an electric field. An electron is a localized disturbance or perturbation in that field that can occupy atomic orbitals or propagate through space. But its “movement” is not like that of a ball sailing through space. It is a kind of pulse in the electric field that has charge and behaves with attributes that people can view and both wave-like and particle-like.

One of the annoying pedagogical tools we can’t get past is the description or illustration of wave motion as an undulation or a squiggle smeared over time. Wave behavior is reciprocating behavior. The view of a water wave as an undulation inferring flow is dead wrong. Water wave motion is vertical, like a fishing bobber. Water waves can be standing in place between barriers or on top of an underlying current. The all too common misunderstanding is in viewing an undulating line itself as the wave rather than the reciprocating movement from peak to trough.

But, if we had properly taught kids about wave motion in the past, would the Beach Boys have been able to sing about catching a wave. I. Just. Don’t. Know.