7 ms·

What is Electricity? (1996)

113 points by warpech 6y ago

jimhefferon 6y ago
I fell in love with electronics and radio, and got my ham license, based on a book that I swiped from my local library (https://www.amazon.com/Elements-radio-Prentice-Hall-industrial-arts/dp/0132711893/ref=dp_ob_title_bk https://www.amazon.com/Elements-radio-Prentice-Hall-industri...). It took a person step by step up through complexity, saying "this is good but it has this problem and the next step is to fix it with ...". But that was the 70's. Are there any books that take the same approach to today's electronics, and radio in particular? Frankly, the latest stuff, with Q and god-knows what, leave me scratching my head.
- amelius 6y ago
  Today's electronics is mostly done by big semiconductor companies. The sad reality is that today's hobbyists merely read datasheets and glue together existing ICs. You simply can't make a WiFi transceiver out of discrete components.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    You simply can't make a WiFi transceiver out of discrete components. That sounds like a challenge... given that someone has already done something similar with a GPS receiver: http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html
    - aspenmayer 6y ago
      Not sure if this counts, as these are SoC, but still very high difficulty and very cool: ‘So you think you’re pretty good at soldering really tiny parts onto a PCB? You’re probably not as good as [Shibata] who made a GPS/GLONASS and Geiger counter mashup deadbug-style with tiny 0402-sized parts. ‘The device uses an extremely small GPS/GLONASS receiver, an AVR ATxmega128D3 microcontroller, a standard Nokia phone display and an interesting Geiger tube with a mica window to track its location and the current level of radiation.‘ https://hackaday.com/2015/04/26/a-deadbugged-gpsglonassgeiger-counter/ https://hackaday.com/2015/04/26/a-deadbugged-gpsglonassgeige... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo8qckXgNNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo8qckXgNNw
    - wl 6y ago
      You could probably do WiFi with an SDR with an FPGA, but that's about as much as a hobbyist could probably pull off.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi
  - kragen 6y ago
    Can you make it from raw silicon via CMP or MOSIS? It seems like a pricey hobby (probably you'll be out US$20k before you have a working chip) but not in the same league of costliness as antique cars or art collecting.
- mtreis86 6y ago
  I bought The Art of Electronics after I got my Amateur Extra, but I wish I had read it before.
dang 6y ago
Lists don't make such great HN submissions because there isn't much to discuss about them other than the lowest common denominator (or greatest common factor?) of the items on the list, which in this case is electricity—a pretty generic topic. It would be better to pick the most interesting article on the list and submit that instead, so that there's something more specific to discuss. Does anybody want to nominate one? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20denominator%20list&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- greenyoda 6y ago
  This one looks interesting: How transistors really work (1995) http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html
  - dang 6y ago
    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23444366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23444366 - same offer here. Thanks!
  - exmadscientist 6y ago
    This is the best one. I'm a professional in this area (physicist turned EE), and coming by this explanation took me a lot more time and energy than just reading his article. Transistor action is a wonderfully subtle yet powerful phenomenon. (In the same vein, of hard questions with easy-ish answers once you do the research, but that no one ever answers: why is N-type silicon better performing than P-type, down there at the most fundamental level? And whither the P-channel depletion mode MOSFET?) I dislike Beaty's writing style and fondness for pedantry (though I concede that clearing the air about definitions is extremely valuable), but his explanations are accessible and they are always correct in ways that few other sources are, and that's amazing.
    - wbeaty 6y ago
      My parents were grade-school teachers, and my dad almost got fired for defending the idea that nickel metal is magnetic. But it's right there in the grade school textbooks! The only magnetic materials are IRON AND STEEL! PERIOD! (Oh and also the blood in your veins is bright blue like paint. And gravity in space is zero.) Back in the 1980s I decided to do something about this (via science museum exhibit designs.) Then I discovered the great power of "educational memes," like engineering your own Vaccina viruses which spread all through the textbooks, jumping from author to author and innoculating millions of little kids against the bad information. But to do this successfully, I'd have to write website articles which 1) correct the misinformation in textbooks, 2) didn't draw attention from powerful critics who would put a stop to all that and, also 3) didn't create even worse mistakes! My first one was this: http://amasci.com/wing/airfoil.html http://amasci.com/wing/airfoil.html This "lifting-force counter-meme" has now spread system-wide. Air doesn't split before the wing, then rejoins behind the wing. Instead the so-called"path-length" or "equal transit-time" explanation is wrong, and actually the air above the wing will greatly out-race the air traveling below. The parcels are split, but then they experience significant "phase shift," so they never re-join again (this as long as lift is being created.)
jml7c5 6y ago
I have always loved this site. I wish there was a search engine that indexed only pages like these. Something that penalized pages with ads[1], and penalized larger sites. A search engine for the "personal" web. [1]: Not that I'm actually opposed to ads. The trouble is the incentive of "more views = more money" leads to content farming, which is what has destroyed the usefulness of most search engines.
- freediver 6y ago
  I thought the same so I built one as an experiment: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzrogb5 https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzro... More on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209358 Result: You likely only love the idea of one, but wouldn't actually use it. Main reason is it it would represent only a very small fraction of searchable web that you will forget to use it.
  - metrokoi 6y ago
    Why not simply append surface web Google results to whatever "personal" web pages are returned? Or heavily prioritize "personal" web results. If what you are searching for has been written about on one of those pages you get that result, if not you still have all the usual Google results to choose from.
- djaque 6y ago
  Came here to comment the same. I have memories of spending nights just reading it as a teen. IIRC, there is some conspiracy theory stuff on it, but there's so much interesting content. I think the guy is an exhibit designer at the Boston museum of science or something.
- Treblemaker 6y ago
  Wiby.com was discussed here a while back: "Does anyone remember websites?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631565
davidandgoliath 6y ago
What a great site, thanks for the link. I've sent every article on it to my kindle & now I've got some good bath time reading! :)
- darkteflon 6y ago
  What are you using to do this, if you don’t mind?
- dang 6y ago
  (Submitted URL was http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html, which we changed to one of the particular articles per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23443435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23443435)
- wbeaty 6y ago
  Don't miss the YT videos: http://amasci.com/amateur/videos.html http://amasci.com/amateur/videos.html Also on YT itself https://www.youtube.com/user/wbeaty/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/wbeaty/videos
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"Well, maybe we don't need to choose just one definition. Could we mix them? Could we let Electricity be an "elastic term?" Suppose we ignore all these contradictions and instead pretend that all of the above definitions are true. Below is the "clear" and "simple" description of electricity which results: Electricity is quite simple: "electricity" is just the flowing motion of electricity! Electricity is a mysterious incomprehensible entity which is invisible and visible, both at the same time. Also, electricity is both a form of energy and a type of matter. Both. Electricity is a kind of low-frequency radio wave which is made of protons. It's a mysterious force which cannot be seen, and yet it looks like blue-white fire that arcs across the clouds. It moves forward at the speed of light... yet it sits and vibrates inside your AC cord without flowing forwards at all. It's totally weightless, yet it has a small weight. When electricity flows through a light bulb's filament, it gets changed entirely into light. Yet not one bit of electricity is ever used up by the light bulb, and all the electricity flows out of the filament and back down the other wire. College textbooks are full of electricity, yet they have no electric charge! Electricity is like sound waves, no no, it's just like wind, no, the electricity is like the air molecules. Electricity is like cars on a highway, no, the electricity is the speed of the cars, no, electricity is just like "traffic waves." Electricity is a class of phenomena ...a class of phenomena which can be stored in batteries! If you want to measure a quantity of electricity, what units should you use? Why Volts of electricity, of course. And also Coulombs of electricity. And Amperes of electricity. Watts of electricity and Joules, all at the same time. Yet "electricity" is definitely a class of phenomena; merely a type of event. Since we can't have an amount of an event, we can't really measure the quantity of electricity at all... right? Right? Heh heh. Does my description above sound stupid and impossible? You're right. It is. The word "electricity" has contradictory meanings, and I'm trying to show what happens when we accept more than one meaning. Electricity is not both slow and fast at the same time. It is not both visible and invisible. And electricity isn't the flowing motion ...of electricity. Instead, approximately ten separate things have the name "electricity." PDS: Observation: You could say that there are little pixies, little faeries dancing in the wires, instead of electrons, volts or amps, and if you did so, the electricity could still work, and no one would be any wiser... What Science has done, up until now, is that they have named different aspects, different attributes of electricity, and they have mathematically defined the relationship of many but not all possibilities of these attributes under many but not all possible circumstances... What Science has not done, to date, however, is clearly explained what electricity actually is. In other words, we don't have a microscope such that we can "see" electricity and precisely what's going on at the atomic level (or whichever levels of scale that electricity takes place at), that is, we cannot see the exact CAUSE, we can only use measuring devices to measure EFFECTS. Everything in our Science, to date, is about the EFFECTS generated by electricity. But we are not one step closer to understanding it's TRUE CAUSE. The idea that because a chemical reaction generates electricity, or a magnet moving across a wire (or wire moving across a magent) we understand it to be the CAUSE of electricity -- is not true. That's because in order to get closer to understanding the CAUSE of electricity, we have to understand what every way of generating electricity -- has in common with every other way... Do we really understand that? Someone care to take a crack at explaining how a chemical reaction which generates electricity is like moving a magnet across a wire? And what do those two things have in common with charging a capacitor via a Van De Graaff generator? They all generate "electrons"? No! The Van De Graaff generator generates electricity via friction, the wire via induced current, and the chemical reaction, how is that in any way similar to the other two? You see, we have a lot to learn, if we're willing to remove this arbitrary all-too-convenient explanation word called the "electron" -- which serves as a place at which all reasoning stops... The word "electron" in today's science is like "God" in yesterday's religions: Question (to a priest of yesteryear): "So if God exists then who or what created God?" Priest: "I'm sorry, God is presumed to self-exist, and presumed to be the ultimate authority, so we don't question that any further..." Question (To a scientist of today): "OK, so if electrons exist and are the cause of electricity, then what are they, and how are they created? Physicist: "I'm sorry, electrons are presumed to self-exist, presumed to be the cause of all electricity, beyond that, we don't question them or that they exist..." But what if all of these electrons, which everyone claims exist... really do not exist? We could call 'electrons' by other names: little pixies, little faeries, very small "magical elves" dancing in the wires, and it wouldn't change the EFFECTS of the electricity or the electrical circuit, but it wouldn't get us one step closer to a really deep understanding of what is really going on "down there", the true CAUSE...
stephen_g 6y ago
Perhaps the article misses a simple solution - ‘electricity’ might be better described as being a category, not a specific phenomenon.
- karl-j 6y ago
  After the field of straw men and bad made up definitions the author does actually arrive at something resembling that conclusion. > There is no single thing named "electricity." We must accept the fact that, while several different things do exist inside wires, people wrongly call all of them by a single name.
- wbeaty 6y ago
  If "electricity" is really just a category ...then we've just added another definition to the list! That just makes things worse! (Well, unless you can somehow erase all the competing ones. Better choose one definition and then fight to the death with everyone who prefers another.) So, which one is the One True Definition? Is Electricity the energy? Is it the charge-flow? Is it the electrons? Watts of electricity? Volts? Is Electricity really just a category (such as bioelectricity, piezoelectricity, etc.?) Besides the strict narrow definition offered by Maxwell in his multi-volume EM treatise, I prefer the wise-ass definition crafted by Ambrose Bierce: ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
k__ 6y ago
In elementary school I learned electricity is moving electrons and I understood. In highschool I learned electricity is moving electrons, but more like peas in a straw and I understood. In university I learned something about fields, and I have no idea what electricity is anymore.
- Already__Taken 6y ago
  I think 15/20 of your most developmental years spent with the wrong model screws us. Kids don't know something is weird and hard if you don't tell them that first.
  - jagged-chisel 6y ago
    But we also want kids to be curious about "weird and hard." I guess at that point it's the parenting that matters.
tipsysquid 6y ago
I find summary message at the end particularly enlightening. > But if you ask what is electricity?, then all of the answers you'll find will just confuse you, and you'll never stop asking that question. How do we discover that Mrs. McCave named all her sons Dave? How do we discover without a lifetime of study that electricity is not the right name? Is it scientific method? Epistemology?

113 points by warpech 6y ago

I fell in love with electronics and radio, and got my ham license, based on a book that I swiped from my local library (https://www.amazon.com/Elements-radio-Prentice-Hall-industrial-arts/dp/0132711893/ref=dp_ob_title_bk https://www.amazon.com/Elements-radio-Prentice-Hall-industri...). It took a person step by step up through complexity, saying "this is good but it has this problem and the next step is to fix it with ...". But that was the 70's. Are there any books that take the same approach to today's electronics, and radio in particular? Frankly, the latest stuff, with Q and god-knows what, leave me scratching my head.

amelius 6y ago
Today's electronics is mostly done by big semiconductor companies. The sad reality is that today's hobbyists merely read datasheets and glue together existing ICs. You simply can't make a WiFi transceiver out of discrete components.
- userbinator 6y ago
  You simply can't make a WiFi transceiver out of discrete components. That sounds like a challenge... given that someone has already done something similar with a GPS receiver: http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html http://lea.hamradio.si/~s53mv/navsats/theory.html
  - aspenmayer 6y ago
    Not sure if this counts, as these are SoC, but still very high difficulty and very cool: ‘So you think you’re pretty good at soldering really tiny parts onto a PCB? You’re probably not as good as [Shibata] who made a GPS/GLONASS and Geiger counter mashup deadbug-style with tiny 0402-sized parts. ‘The device uses an extremely small GPS/GLONASS receiver, an AVR ATxmega128D3 microcontroller, a standard Nokia phone display and an interesting Geiger tube with a mica window to track its location and the current level of radiation.‘ https://hackaday.com/2015/04/26/a-deadbugged-gpsglonassgeiger-counter/ https://hackaday.com/2015/04/26/a-deadbugged-gpsglonassgeige... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo8qckXgNNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo8qckXgNNw
  - wl 6y ago
    You could probably do WiFi with an SDR with an FPGA, but that's about as much as a hobbyist could probably pull off.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi
- kragen 6y ago
  Can you make it from raw silicon via CMP or MOSIS? It seems like a pricey hobby (probably you'll be out US$20k before you have a working chip) but not in the same league of costliness as antique cars or art collecting.
mtreis86 6y ago
I bought The Art of Electronics after I got my Amateur Extra, but I wish I had read it before.

dang 6y ago

Lists don't make such great HN submissions because there isn't much to discuss about them other than the lowest common denominator (or greatest common factor?) of the items on the list, which in this case is electricity—a pretty generic topic. It would be better to pick the most interesting article on the list and submit that instead, so that there's something more specific to discuss. Does anybody want to nominate one? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20denominator%20list&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

greenyoda 6y ago
This one looks interesting: How transistors really work (1995) http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html
- dang 6y ago
  Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23444366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23444366 - same offer here. Thanks!
- exmadscientist 6y ago
  This is the best one. I'm a professional in this area (physicist turned EE), and coming by this explanation took me a lot more time and energy than just reading his article. Transistor action is a wonderfully subtle yet powerful phenomenon. (In the same vein, of hard questions with easy-ish answers once you do the research, but that no one ever answers: why is N-type silicon better performing than P-type, down there at the most fundamental level? And whither the P-channel depletion mode MOSFET?) I dislike Beaty's writing style and fondness for pedantry (though I concede that clearing the air about definitions is extremely valuable), but his explanations are accessible and they are always correct in ways that few other sources are, and that's amazing.
  - wbeaty 6y ago
    My parents were grade-school teachers, and my dad almost got fired for defending the idea that nickel metal is magnetic. But it's right there in the grade school textbooks! The only magnetic materials are IRON AND STEEL! PERIOD! (Oh and also the blood in your veins is bright blue like paint. And gravity in space is zero.) Back in the 1980s I decided to do something about this (via science museum exhibit designs.) Then I discovered the great power of "educational memes," like engineering your own Vaccina viruses which spread all through the textbooks, jumping from author to author and innoculating millions of little kids against the bad information. But to do this successfully, I'd have to write website articles which 1) correct the misinformation in textbooks, 2) didn't draw attention from powerful critics who would put a stop to all that and, also 3) didn't create even worse mistakes! My first one was this: http://amasci.com/wing/airfoil.html http://amasci.com/wing/airfoil.html This "lifting-force counter-meme" has now spread system-wide. Air doesn't split before the wing, then rejoins behind the wing. Instead the so-called"path-length" or "equal transit-time" explanation is wrong, and actually the air above the wing will greatly out-race the air traveling below. The parcels are split, but then they experience significant "phase shift," so they never re-join again (this as long as lift is being created.)

jml7c5 6y ago

I have always loved this site. I wish there was a search engine that indexed only pages like these. Something that penalized pages with ads[1], and penalized larger sites. A search engine for the "personal" web. [1]: Not that I'm actually opposed to ads. The trouble is the incentive of "more views = more money" leads to content farming, which is what has destroyed the usefulness of most search engines.

freediver 6y ago
I thought the same so I built one as an experiment: https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzrogb5 https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=014479775183020491825:c2lrlzro... More on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21209358 Result: You likely only love the idea of one, but wouldn't actually use it. Main reason is it it would represent only a very small fraction of searchable web that you will forget to use it.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  Why not simply append surface web Google results to whatever "personal" web pages are returned? Or heavily prioritize "personal" web results. If what you are searching for has been written about on one of those pages you get that result, if not you still have all the usual Google results to choose from.
djaque 6y ago
Came here to comment the same. I have memories of spending nights just reading it as a teen. IIRC, there is some conspiracy theory stuff on it, but there's so much interesting content. I think the guy is an exhibit designer at the Boston museum of science or something.
Treblemaker 6y ago
Wiby.com was discussed here a while back: "Does anyone remember websites?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631565

davidandgoliath 6y ago

What a great site, thanks for the link. I've sent every article on it to my kindle & now I've got some good bath time reading! :)

darkteflon 6y ago
What are you using to do this, if you don’t mind?
dang 6y ago
(Submitted URL was http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html, which we changed to one of the particular articles per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23443435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23443435)
wbeaty 6y ago
Don't miss the YT videos: http://amasci.com/amateur/videos.html http://amasci.com/amateur/videos.html Also on YT itself https://www.youtube.com/user/wbeaty/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/wbeaty/videos

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"Well, maybe we don't need to choose just one definition. Could we mix them? Could we let Electricity be an "elastic term?" Suppose we ignore all these contradictions and instead pretend that all of the above definitions are true. Below is the "clear" and "simple" description of electricity which results: Electricity is quite simple: "electricity" is just the flowing motion of electricity! Electricity is a mysterious incomprehensible entity which is invisible and visible, both at the same time. Also, electricity is both a form of energy and a type of matter. Both. Electricity is a kind of low-frequency radio wave which is made of protons. It's a mysterious force which cannot be seen, and yet it looks like blue-white fire that arcs across the clouds. It moves forward at the speed of light... yet it sits and vibrates inside your AC cord without flowing forwards at all. It's totally weightless, yet it has a small weight. When electricity flows through a light bulb's filament, it gets changed entirely into light. Yet not one bit of electricity is ever used up by the light bulb, and all the electricity flows out of the filament and back down the other wire. College textbooks are full of electricity, yet they have no electric charge! Electricity is like sound waves, no no, it's just like wind, no, the electricity is like the air molecules. Electricity is like cars on a highway, no, the electricity is the speed of the cars, no, electricity is just like "traffic waves." Electricity is a class of phenomena ...a class of phenomena which can be stored in batteries! If you want to measure a quantity of electricity, what units should you use? Why Volts of electricity, of course. And also Coulombs of electricity. And Amperes of electricity. Watts of electricity and Joules, all at the same time. Yet "electricity" is definitely a class of phenomena; merely a type of event. Since we can't have an amount of an event, we can't really measure the quantity of electricity at all... right? Right? Heh heh. Does my description above sound stupid and impossible? You're right. It is. The word "electricity" has contradictory meanings, and I'm trying to show what happens when we accept more than one meaning. Electricity is not both slow and fast at the same time. It is not both visible and invisible. And electricity isn't the flowing motion ...of electricity. Instead, approximately ten separate things have the name "electricity." PDS: Observation: You could say that there are little pixies, little faeries dancing in the wires, instead of electrons, volts or amps, and if you did so, the electricity could still work, and no one would be any wiser... What Science has done, up until now, is that they have named different aspects, different attributes of electricity, and they have mathematically defined the relationship of many but not all possibilities of these attributes under many but not all possible circumstances... What Science has not done, to date, however, is clearly explained what electricity actually is. In other words, we don't have a microscope such that we can "see" electricity and precisely what's going on at the atomic level (or whichever levels of scale that electricity takes place at), that is, we cannot see the exact CAUSE, we can only use measuring devices to measure EFFECTS. Everything in our Science, to date, is about the EFFECTS generated by electricity. But we are not one step closer to understanding it's TRUE CAUSE. The idea that because a chemical reaction generates electricity, or a magnet moving across a wire (or wire moving across a magent) we understand it to be the CAUSE of electricity -- is not true. That's because in order to get closer to understanding the CAUSE of electricity, we have to understand what every way of generating electricity -- has in common with every other way... Do we really understand that? Someone care to take a crack at explaining how a chemical reaction which generates electricity is like moving a magnet across a wire? And what do those two things have in common with charging a capacitor via a Van De Graaff generator? They all generate "electrons"? No! The Van De Graaff generator generates electricity via friction, the wire via induced current, and the chemical reaction, how is that in any way similar to the other two? You see, we have a lot to learn, if we're willing to remove this arbitrary all-too-convenient explanation word called the "electron" -- which serves as a place at which all reasoning stops... The word "electron" in today's science is like "God" in yesterday's religions: Question (to a priest of yesteryear): "So if God exists then who or what created God?" Priest: "I'm sorry, God is presumed to self-exist, and presumed to be the ultimate authority, so we don't question that any further..." Question (To a scientist of today): "OK, so if electrons exist and are the cause of electricity, then what are they, and how are they created? Physicist: "I'm sorry, electrons are presumed to self-exist, presumed to be the cause of all electricity, beyond that, we don't question them or that they exist..." But what if all of these electrons, which everyone claims exist... really do not exist? We could call 'electrons' by other names: little pixies, little faeries, very small "magical elves" dancing in the wires, and it wouldn't change the EFFECTS of the electricity or the electrical circuit, but it wouldn't get us one step closer to a really deep understanding of what is really going on "down there", the true CAUSE...

stephen_g 6y ago

Perhaps the article misses a simple solution - ‘electricity’ might be better described as being a category, not a specific phenomenon.

karl-j 6y ago
After the field of straw men and bad made up definitions the author does actually arrive at something resembling that conclusion. > There is no single thing named "electricity." We must accept the fact that, while several different things do exist inside wires, people wrongly call all of them by a single name.
wbeaty 6y ago
If "electricity" is really just a category ...then we've just added another definition to the list! That just makes things worse! (Well, unless you can somehow erase all the competing ones. Better choose one definition and then fight to the death with everyone who prefers another.) So, which one is the One True Definition? Is Electricity the energy? Is it the charge-flow? Is it the electrons? Watts of electricity? Volts? Is Electricity really just a category (such as bioelectricity, piezoelectricity, etc.?) Besides the strict narrow definition offered by Maxwell in his multi-volume EM treatise, I prefer the wise-ass definition crafted by Ambrose Bierce: ELECTRICITY, n. The power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.

k__ 6y ago

In elementary school I learned electricity is moving electrons and I understood. In highschool I learned electricity is moving electrons, but more like peas in a straw and I understood. In university I learned something about fields, and I have no idea what electricity is anymore.

Already__Taken 6y ago
I think 15/20 of your most developmental years spent with the wrong model screws us. Kids don't know something is weird and hard if you don't tell them that first.
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  But we also want kids to be curious about "weird and hard." I guess at that point it's the parenting that matters.

tipsysquid 6y ago

I find summary message at the end particularly enlightening. > But if you ask what is electricity?, then all of the answers you'll find will just confuse you, and you'll never stop asking that question. How do we discover that Mrs. McCave named all her sons Dave? How do we discover without a lifetime of study that electricity is not the right name? Is it scientific method? Epistemology?