3 ms·

Well, when I asked before, people said that hydraulic or pneumatic systems are not apt analogies; because there is water, oil or water actually flowing. Now it'

by roel_v 10y ago

Well, when I asked before, people said that hydraulic or pneumatic systems are not apt analogies; because there is water, oil or water actually flowing. Now it's not the water that is the energy, it's the movement thereof, or the pressure. That's where the analogy starts to break down. For reference, the first time I asked was here: http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2188/does-electricity-have-mass-is-electricity-tangible http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2188/does-electri... (7 years ago - time does fly). There is a bunch of discussion there (also going into at what point a water analogy breaks down), and I'm not sure they agree with each other. I mean, another way of looking at it: you can encode n bits by charging (or not charging) capacitors. Does a series of capacitors encoding '0' have a lower mass than a series encoding '255'? So yeah I don't really understand, still not after all those years. It's probably (in part) because I have not formulated one single yes/no question that is unambiguous or does not need any interpretation to be answered. Or maybe I'm just stupid.

SamReidHughes 10y ago
There is also electrons actually flowing. As far as movement of mass goes, the pneumatic system analogy is a good one. It is not a mathematically identical system. Look, you can just look at how this stuff works. Electrons move randomly, and when there's a current they move on average in a certain direction because the electric field leans that way. That's it. See my link I pasted above, it describes what happens when a current is flowing. A capacitor encoding '0' will have the same number of electrons as when it encodes '1' because that's the way capacitors work. You can read about it at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor

by roel_v 10y ago

SamReidHughes 10y ago

There is also electrons actually flowing. As far as movement of mass goes, the pneumatic system analogy is a good one. It is not a mathematically identical system. Look, you can just look at how this stuff works. Electrons move randomly, and when there's a current they move on average in a certain direction because the electric field leans that way. That's it. See my link I pasted above, it describes what happens when a current is flowing. A capacitor encoding '0' will have the same number of electrons as when it encodes '1' because that's the way capacitors work. You can read about it at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor