The high resistance piece of wire in incandescent light bulbs glows as a result of electrons incoming through a low resistance material being squeezed through (bombard electrons that don’t want to be moved in) the high resistance material with a certain pressure (voltage). We are using the high resistance material to usurp (convert into heat and then into light) the kinetic energy of the electrons in the low resistance material (commonly copper wire).
We do the same thing with electrical heating elements and microphones.
Are we also doing this in electrical appliances from which we don’t expect a certain “end product” (heat, light, sound)? For instance, computers. When we were still using actual physical relays to build logic gates, I can imaging electron flow being converted into the energy (eletrco magnetism?) required to actuate/move the switch inside the relay. But what about today’s transistors? The processing units inside CPUs and GPUs heat up, but that’s a side effect of something I don’t understand. We are not trying to reap that heat. We are after manipulating groups transistors into expressing boolean logic by either giving them a voltage or not.
I know very little of electricity, so please do correct any incorrect assumptions! I’m very eager to learn! 😊💡
This is a reasonable description of heating elements and incandescent lightbulbs.
Microphones, generators, speakers, and motors typically involve an electromagnet and a permanent magnet. For speakers and motors, electrons moving in a circle generates a magnetic field, which pushes against the permanent magnetic field of the permanent magnet. For microphones, and generators, it’s kinda the opposite: a permanent magnet moving near a coil of wire generates a magnetic field.
Transistors, which are the basis of modern CPUs, rely on the need for loose electrons to be around for an electric current to flow. In a carefully crafted setup, you can end up with a current flowing along one path depleting the loose electrons needed for a flow along another path to form. This creates a kind of “electric switch”.
Heat is generated in all of these processes, but it’s generally an unwanted but unavoidable byproduct, similar to heat produced by friction in a mechanical system.
I’m not sure what you mean by “EFFECTS of electron flow” vs “electricity”.
What tends to matter is the electromagnetic fields and how they change. Often we use electrons flowing in a piece of metal because they are easily influenced by electromagnetic fields, but also when there is an electron flow in a wire, the shape of that wire can result in different electromagnetic fields. However, I think it’s worth mentioning that electrons and wires are just convenient for controlling the electromagnetic force. It’s possible to have electromagnetic effects without either (for example, lightning and static electricity are electromagnetic effects that don’t involve conductors, and light is an electromagnetic effect that doesn’t rely on electrons).
I’m happy to answer more questions, I’m trying not to launch into a whole physics lecture lol but I sure can if you like.
Thank you for the elaborate response! Are radiowaves also electromagnetic fields, or are those something completely different?
What I meant by the vague title was whether we actually consume or use the electrons themselves or simply reap the biproducts of some kind of manipulation that we do with them. I guess we do both, then, since it seems like it’s the acutal current in one node of a transistor that frees up/depletes the electrons of another node/path, as opposed to heat and light, where we instead reap some biproduct?
Radiowaves are a color of light that we can’t see. Technically “light” typically only refers to visible colors, and we call everything else “electromagnetic radiation”. Radio waves, microwaves, and infrared light are past the red end of the rainbow, while ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays are past the violet end of the rainbow. All of these are self-propagating ripples in electromagnetic fields.
It’s very difficult to actually destroy an electron. When I said the electrons are “depleted” in a transistor I meant they are pushed somewhere else. Electrons can be pushed and pulled by electromagnetic fields, so in a transistor one current makes a field that pushes electrons out of the region where they would need to be for the other current to use them.
In all cases it’s the electromagnetic fields that actually do the work.
If you want to know about electrons actually being destroyed, an electron will annihilate with a positron (antimatter electron) releasing some gamma rays. There are some medical applications for radioactive material that produces positrons which annihilate to produce gamma rays in this way, and then they can detect the gamma rays.
Thanks for all the clarifications! It’s mindboggling and fascinating how we found out about all this, came up with concepts and pointers - language - to express and describe it all.
For the fundamental concepts of electromagnetism, see ‘Maxwell’s Equations’. Personally, I prefer looking at the differential equation versions to understand the interplay between electro- and -magnetism and how that relates to light/electricity/so many things
Everything is part of the EM (electromagnetic) spectrum - light, radio, microwaves (which were originally/still used for radio) etc.
https://www.narodnatribuna.info/lists/pictures/electromagnetic-spectrum-diagram-for-kids/
Check your library for the Great Courses Electrical Engineering for Everyone
You’re also stepping into the realm of Quantum Physics, which is what helped me start to understand electricity at the quantum (i.e. electron) level.
Taking the Quantum Leap is just about the best intro I’ve come across for an intro to Quantum Physics. Super easy read, life-changing, paradigm-shifting consequences.
The Great Courses also has Understanding the Quantum World (hopefully your library has it).
Katching😉
Is how I say thank you for all this to a persons whose display name is onomatopoeia. 😁