I have read that the electric energy flows from the battery into the circuit through electric field created  outside the wires into the light bulb (or any other resistor). I have also read that the friction caused in the movement of electrons cause light bulb to heat up. So which is the correct explanation?
42056
On a systems level, I understand that as electrons are pushed into a wire, there is a net field and a net electron velocity.  And I've read that the net electron drift is slow.  But electricity travels through the wire, essentially at c, and I want to understand that mechanism.  My apologies if my question is poorly stated, I know bare bones undergraduate quantum theory circa 1990s but it doesn't explain the motion of electricity in detail.  Here's my conception, I'm hoping someone will fill in the holes, ha ha.  An electron moves into the wire.  It's got a kinetic energy.  After travelling a short distance, it spontaneously emits a photon, which hits another electron in a valence shell.  That electron then presumably does the same.  If this conception is simply wrong, please enlighten me.  The questions that arise:   Presumably at this level, electrons are acting more like waves and less like particles, but is there any classical component in the picture, ie are electrons coming in imparting other electrons with kinetic energy through repulsion, or does it not work that way? If electrons momentarily have energy, then pass it on by a photon, what determines when that photon is emitted, and what frequency it will be?  I assume that electrons in this cloud are not limited by any kind of exclusion principal, and that any frequencies are possible? Why should a photon emitted by an electron be in the direction of travel?  Conservation of momentum tells me that if an electron is moving, the photon should be emitted in that direction, slowing the electron, but could an electron emit a photon in the opposite direction?  If it did, I assume it would somehow have had to absorb energy from elsewhere? That sounds possible by analogy with quantum tunneling. What is the mechanism by which electrons propagating increase the temperature of the material?  Are they transmitting energy to the electrons in the valence shell, which tug at the nucleus, do some photons hit the nuclei directly, or is there some other way?  Presumably, electricity travels slower than light, because there is some time in each exchange, and some time when electrons are moving at sublight speeds before emitting a photon.  By how much is this slower than light, and what is the speed of each interaction?
77283
I know this question sounds silly, as if there was a potential difference a current would be created when the terminals are connected together and this would mean energy has come from somewhere.  The reason I ask this though is that from my understanding of the depletion region and built in potential of a diode it seems like if you connected a voltmeter across the whole diode it would show the value of the built in potential.  This is explained in the image below:    At first, electrons flow from the n type to the p type because there are a higher concentration in the n type, and holes do vise versa. This is called the diffusion current. The first electrons and holes to cross the pn boundary are the ones which are closest to it; these carriers recombine when they meet each other and are then no longer a carrier. This means there is a depletion region of no carriers near the pn boundary. because electrons have left the n type material, and holes have left the p type material, there is a surplus of positive and negative charge on the n and p side of the pn boundary respectively. This causes an electric field that opposes the diffusion current, and so no more electrons or holes cross the boundary and combine. In short, only the electrons and holes near the boundary combine, because after they have done that an electric field is formed that prevents any more carriers from crossing. The current due to this electric field is called drift current, and when in equilibrium this will equal the diffusion current. Because there is an electric field at the boundary (pointing from the positive charge to the negative charge) there is an associated voltage. This is called the built in potential.  If you sample the electric field at each point along the diode from left to right, you would start with 0 in the p region because there are an equal number of protons and electrons. As you approach the depletion region you would see a small electric field pointing back towards the p region, caused by acceptor impurities which now have an extra electron (due to recombination) and therefore now have a net negative charge. This electric field would increase in strength as you get closer to the boundary, and then die away as you get further away.  This electric field means there is a voltage, as shown in graph (d). The p side is at an arbitrary potential, and the n side is at a potential higher than this because there is an electric field between them. This means there is a potential difference across the depletion region; this is known as the built-in potential.  But why when I connect a volt-meter across the whole diode will I not see this built in potential?
93662
I have been using and making LED flashlights for years now and I am VERY familiar with all of the circuitry and technology inside of them, but I just got my first LED house light bulb that runs off of 110v AC electricity.  It is very similar to a flashlight - it has a large heatsink, and 1 or more LEDs inside of it (brand and specs of emitters, I do not know).  The part that I am most curious about is how the electricity from the socket gets to the emitter.  In a flashlight the power comes from a DC battery through a current regulator (LED driver) and into the LED itself.  This is not difficult because the voltage of common LED emitters is about the same voltage as Lithium batteries (3.7v, 7.4v, etc) which makes the current limiting relatively simple coming from a one or two cell light.  How does this work for a high voltage AC bulb?  Is there a transformer and rectifier inside of EVERY bulb (I sure hope not), or are the emitters manufactured to run off of 110v AC power and just use half of the wave cycle?
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Please be kind, I am an electronics nub.  This is in reference to getting an LED to emit photons.  From what I read (Getting Started in Electronics - Forrest Mims III and Make: Electronics) electrons flow from the more negative side to the more positive side.  In an example experiment (involving a primary dry cell, a SPDT switch, a resistor and an LED) it states that the resistor MUST be connected to the anode of the LED.  In my mind, if the electrons flow from negative to positive, wouldn't the electron flow run through the LED before the resistor; thereby making the resistor pointless?
67997
Let me show a figure first about the shape of flame for a candle without any external electric field in the dark night:        Now consider the following physical configuration: If you put this lighted candle into the parallel plate capacitor, in which the electric field produced by it can be turned up or turn down arbitrarily.  So my question is: what's the shape of the flame of the candle when we keep the electric field stationary and how is it changed as we increased the field or decrease the field yielded by the parallel plate electrical capacitor?
35313
Where do the electrons come from when an electric generator is making electricity?  Is from the air?  Would a generator work in a vacuum?  Electrons have mass so where would they be pulled from if there is nothing?
111141
when we use a DC battery into a circuit the flow of electrons in wire creates a clear picture as they flow from negative terminal to positive terminal. under AC(Alternating current) we know how energy flows and what does it mean by $I_{rms}$ or average current etc. But what about the pattern in which electrons move?
6829
What waveform does the light coming off different types of artificial light sources have and (of course) what are the underlying physical reason for them?    I was inspired to ask this question because of several things I have been hearing lately.  Firstly, there was a recent TED talk about how .  Researchers have been working on the problem for a little while now and they've made a fairly impressive product, but it was only recently made possible by the LED technology, which has such a fast response that it can easily compare to the transfer rates of electric information condiuits that we normally use.  My understanding is that incandescent bulbs flicker because they have 60 Hz AC power being pulsed through them.  In fact, I think 60 Hz was chosen in the first place because it was a threshold that was unnoticeable to humans.  Looking at a  demonstrates that it has a very significant lag time responding to both the normal electrical phasor and being turned off.  In other words, it flickers but it doesn't go dark at any point in the AC waveform.  Looking for more information, however, I was a little disappointed, since nothing seemed to give a graph of lumens emitted over time for all different kinds of bulbs.  Of course, there isn't just one relevant time scale.  A light could flicker with 60 Hz and also flicker with 2000 Hz (I just made that up).  I'm interested in the complete picture of what lights exhibit what patterns.
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I am looking for better understanding of how light is produced in an incadescent lamp. More specifically: how is the kinetic energy of electrons converted to light?  Are we dealing with interband transitions or with intraband relaxation involving photons? Is this Bremsstrahlung (electrons lose their energy as light when colliding with crystal impurities/defects)? Or is this a thetmal radiation resulting from Joule heating? How is the emission affected by presence of impurities and imperfections of the crystal lattice? Do phonons play a role? What properties make a material more suitable for use as a filament: should it be a metal? Should it have a crystalline structure? Will any metal produce light, if a high current is passed through it in vacuum?  Update The term describing the processes in the incadescent lamp is , see the posts on this subject  and .
10886
When I was young and learning about electricity, a fabulous tool for understanding voltage/current/resistance was an incandescent lightbulb (in my case it was a small 3V bulb). When you doubled the voltage by putting two batteries in series, it glowed 4x as bright, but heated up more and was more prone to burning out. When you put two lightbulbs in series, they glowed 1/4 as bright. When you put them in parallel, they glowed normally, but drained the battery twice as fast. Etc.  This day and age however incandescent bulbs are on the way out, and LEDs are replacing them for a good reason (like not burning out every few months or so). But LEDs are different and follow different rules, which I don't understand myself very well.  I was wondering - can LEDs be used in the same way? I know that for a LED to be usable in a similar way as a classical lightbulb, you need to put it in series with a resistor, otherwise it draws too much current and burns out. I think you can even buy LEDs with built-in resistors. But would they work in the same fashion? Would changes in voltage be accompanied with corresponding changes in brightness?
71563
When I connect two identical lightbulbs in series, how come they have equal brightness?  Why can't one lightbulb have a larger voltage drop than the other?  (i.e. the first lightbulb "uses up all the energy" and the second lightbulb is barely lit because "there isn't much energy left"?
82529
I'm having an hard time understanding primary cells. There are plenty of videos and explanations about the reactions that happen inside the battery, but you must have a strong background in chemistry to really understand them. Instead, I would love to have a description that abstracts from the chemicals details, and still manages to explain its basic working princeples! I would like it to address the following questions/doubts:     Electrons flow form higher potential to lower potential so, when you buy a  battery, is an electric field already there, before connecting it to a wire? (I presume yes) So,How is this field created? Are the electrons at the top and the protons at  the bottom, or just electrons at the top and the bottom is neutral? How are electrons kept together in the same place before connecting the battery  to the wire? What does prevent them to flow inside the battery? How does the battery pump up the electrons? and at which rate? What makes it burn out? and after many cycles does it burn out?       I know there are a lot of questions but my mind is exploding. I don't expect everything to be abstracted from the chemicals but as long as you can through analogies, or intuitive principles, i'd love that. Anyway the main intent of the answer must be addressing the doubts listed.
18243
Bit of a strange question, but what is it? My physics teacher said it was kind of like a "push" that pushes electrons around the circuit. Can I have a more complex explanation? Any help is much appreciated.
88496
I have read this , Which says that conversion efficiency of the LED have exceeded 100%. The results are published in Physical Review Letters     In their experiments, the researchers reduced the LED’s input power to just 30 picowatts and measured an output of 69 picowatts of light - an efficiency of 230%.   How is this possible, is it not the violation of conservation of energy or I am missing something.  Edit: I missed that the LED worked as TE cooler and absorb heat from atmosphere to convert it to light. But still it is overwhelming observation for me.   Is it really possible that a device use thermal energy to produce light.
95455
"Now we turn our attention to what happens in $S'$, in which the particle is at rest and the wire is running past (toward the left in the figure) with the speed $v$. The positive charges moving with the wire will make some magnetic field $\ B'$ at the particle. But the particle is now at $rest$, so there is no magnetic force on it! If there is no magnetic force on the particle, it must come from an electric field. It must be that the moving wire has produced an electric field. But it can do that only if it appears $charged$-it must be that a neutral wire with a current appears to be charged when set in motion."  So i got this from Feynman's lectures in physics volume 2 pg 13-7 and 13-8. I find it hard to believe that the particle experiences no magnetic force due to the moving wire although it's stationary. Since this is classical and not quantum electrodynamics if we assume the charged particle to have inertia, then by Newton's second law, the particle will remain at rest until acted upon by an external force, which i assume is the $magnetic$ $wind$ created by the moving wire past the stationary charged particle. Could someone please clarify??
87469
As I remembered, at the 2 poles of a battery, positive or negative electric charges are gathered. So there'll be electric field existing inside the battery. This filed is neutralized by the chemical power of the battery so the electric charges will stay at the poles.  Since there are electric charges at both poles, there must also be electric fields outside the battery. What happens when we connect a metal wire between the 2 poles of a battery? I vaguely remembered that the wire has the ability to constrain and reshape the electric field and keep it within the wire, maybe like an electric field tube. But is that true?
86341
I was having a conversation with my father and father-in-law, both of whom are in electric related work, and we came to a point where none of us knew how to proceed.  I was under the impression that electricity travels on the surface while they thought it traveled through the interior.  I said that traveling over the surface would make the fact that they regularly use stranded wire instead of a single large wire to transport electricity make sense.    If anyone could please explain this for some non-physics but electricly incline people, I would be very appreciated.