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Turns out Benjamin Franklin had it right, and it was this time traveler that caused him to flip it to the wrong direction.
While funny, this doesn’t work because the time traveler told him specifically which one is negative.
Damn time travelers,
alwaysnevermessing things up!
Always love their comics but since I don’t know crap about this stuff it’s amusing to see how this one is relevant to a meme. Wish I knew more but only so much I’ve learned so far. One day perhaps but not today.
“all models are wrong, but some are useful”
I would even go as far as to say that models are neither right nor wrong, they just are what they are. Like a flower is not right or wrong for blooming a certain way, it just does what it does and does not care about your right and wrong. This is simply because there is no morality outside of human society and therefore no way to establish right or wrong.
In fact, it is us who are right or wrong when we are using a model. We can use it in meaningful ways or nonsensical ways, it’s our choice. That’s why it’s us who are right or wrong.
And that’s why we have positrons instead of the much-cooler-sounding negatrons.
Man, they have positrons and negatrons now? The Transformers franchise is wild.
We gotta keep them out of sports, they are too strong.
The south^of Cybertron^ will rise again?
Oddly when it came time to negotiations, they somehow realized actually calling yourself a Decepticon, was not a good name for inspiring trust.
I have a feeling that in antimatter circuits the positrons would move the same way as the electrons in equivalent matter circuits
Well sure. And in that universe, electrons might be called negatrons.
Most circuit diagrams do not draw current flowing in any direction at all. It’s just labeled + and -. I don’t see anything wrong with this.
Logically the switch comes before the bulb.
That depends, do you want high or a low side switch? There are valid reasons for either depending on what you’re doing.
One that is less likely to kill me. Low side switches leave a “floating” load at the supply voltage that could leak to ground
I’ve left a floating load that leaked to the ground before.
But the current doesn’t care
Current propagates at the speed of light in the conductor. It really doesn’t matter which side the switch is on at human timescales
The convention puts them on the positive side; people who understand the convention is [mostly] wrong put it on the negative side, but it doesn’t matter
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OMG-O-S-H every circuit designed with conventional current just exploded because of your revelation here.
/s
My friend, this is the same branch of science that got us to space with calculations assuming spherical cows.
Eh, i’ve struggled with this for years but eventually found my peace.
You see, there’s two types of electric current: Electrons moving through a wire, and protons moving through water (the second one is also called a pH gradient, it happens e.g. in cell membranes of chloroplasts, fascinating stuff, check it out).
Basically plants do photosynthesis, which is extremely similar to what solar panels do. They generate an electric current, and in that current, positive charges move, so the “direction of current flow” is the correct one.
I have come to accept that the current inside living beings is more important than the current in all the machinery, because without life there would be no machinery, so life deserves to get the “correct” current.
So, it doesn’t actually change anything; everything still works the same.
But textbooks need to be thrown away and remade, every circuit diagram, every electrical engineering plan, decades of research and research papers have to be combed and corrected, or accept that they’re wrong.
While technically possible, it would create colossal risk and unending chaos and It’s environmentally unsound, for something that doesn’t change anything in the end.
Lazy is not checking your mail.
Refusing to turn reality on its head for a null change in the end is something else entirely.
Refusing to turn reality on its head for a null change in the end is something else entirely.
I do agree with you, just want to give voice to the other side of this. Don’t underestimate just how much of a barrier this confusion is in teaching. It’s confusing. Students who are new to electricity almost universally hate this, and in some cases it can cause misunderstanding, miscommunications, etc. There is a genuine cost to this mislabeling, and there would have been effectively no cost if electrons’ charge was considered positive instead of negative.
As I said, I do agree that in practice, with all the existing knowledge, writings and technologies that all agree that electrons are negative, it would be a global disaster if the labeling was switched. There’s no question about it. But I kind of disagree about “null change”, it’s true that it wouldn’t change what we can create or (almost) any of our equations, but it absolutely would make it easier to teach it to future generations.
My electronics teacher weathered it pretty well.
This is a basic circuit. These are how the electric and magnetic fields work. Oh and Franklin fucked up a long time ago, made a guess, and he guessed wrong. So, realistically, electrons flow from negative to positive, and the holes they leave behind flow from positive to negative. (he had already covered PN junctions so it scanned) It doesn’t change the math or anything, just know that electron flow is negative to positive and that’s the last you’ll hear of it. And we all said that’s dumb. And now, in my life, this is like the 5rd time I’ve talked about it since I learned it in 1992.
feels like this should be a skeletor quote!
True, but most of laws, equations etc still work and only specific fields need to adjust for this.
But then you have to flip from the left hand rule to the right hand rule!
I prefer a version of that meme with She-Ra in the photo
Doesn’t matter in a lot of cases. Just state the flow direction and convention once and then stick with it.
so like, on my old car stereo system, the positive was actually coming through the frame of the car? scrape a little spot under the bolt of a seat?
It’s not that hard. this is a skill issue, OP.
Please do not vote or have children.Currents aren’t drawn incorrectly. Electrons do move backwards, but since their electric charge is negative, the current goes the correct way.
I guess it would work much more often, but also not all currents are electrons flowing (Eg ions, holes arguably). I doubt the convention causes much trouble for people
