Re: Basic Home Electrical Question

On 22 Oct 2005 18:32:00 -0700, wardellcastles@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>I think I understand this a little better now thanks to everyone's
>responses.
>
>Let me restate what I think some people have said plus what else I've
>managed to google.
>
>If I pretend the electron flow was water instead of electrons, then
>what's happening is that the electric company is pushing and pulling
>"water" through the black wires at the rate of 60 cycles per second at
>an energy level of 120 volts, hence this is "hot".
>
>The white wire, e.g. "pipe" is connected to a large calm lake, e.g.
>ground potential.
>
>Now If I were to touch the white wire (assuming it was wired correctly
>to the "calm lake", it's just connected a resevoir of electrons at
>ground potential so there's no flow. However if I were to touch the
>black wire and provide a path to ground, then this "water" would be
>flowing through me, e.g. an electrical shock.
>
>Is this at least a reasonable analofy of why black is "hot" and why
>white is "neutral"?
>
>Thanks to everyone for their response.
>

I think you might be confused with the terms AC and DC, current flow
and electron flow.

In a DC circuit, current flow was described as flowing from the (+)
terminal to the minus terminal (-). This convention existed since
the days of Ben Franklin. However, electrons flow from the (-)
terminal to the (+) terminal (the opposite direction to current flow).
Electricians and circuit designers are interested in current flow.
Electron flow might be of interest to a scientist.

In an AC circuit, the poles are changing 50 or 60 times a second.
This has no effect on the magnitude of the current flow. The
electron flow (unlike a DC circuit) will effectively be zero, but the
AC current flow could be huge. Usually (just for convention) we say
the current is flowing from the hot wire and back through the neutral,
but this is just a concept, it actually does not have a direction.

Beachcomber





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is flow of electrons visible?
    ... > Electron flow through a gas is visible only if you get ionization. ... > You can't see into a wire even if ionization were to happen in it, ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: An Absolute Beginner With A Few Questions
    ... > The topics of electron flow and energy flow are a big-assed can of ... > direction of electron flow, but he actually had a good grasp of how ... > Thus we have energy flow from positive to negative, ... > for you - when you get to transistor theory and design, ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: Reference direction of electrical current in teaching/books
    ... electron flow, and later switch to conventional current. ... the hell out of the students, some of whom never get it right. ... over the other and it's purely a matter of convention? ... I have never met anyone who uses electron flow ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: about the arrow direction of bulk of pmos and nmos
    ... I would like to confirm with you all if the arrow convetion of the bulk ... the arrow points toward the gate. ... This has nothing to do with electron flow. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: does this circuit use conventional current?
    ... And current flows from anode to cathode. ... LED is just a diode. ... Looking at the simple circuit diagram, there's a 3V battery and two ... forward-biased diode permits current to flow, ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)