Electrons move because you have an electric field. Like charges repel while opposites attract, so if you have a excess of protons at one point, an excess of ele

Electrons move because you have an electric field. Like charges repel while opposites attract, so if you have a excess of protons at one point, an excess of electrons at another point, and a wire connecting the two points, then the electromotive force will push the electrons through the wire to try to balance out the charges (see Coulomb’s law [0]). In the process, the electrons gain kinetic energy, and if you’re clever you can extract this energy to do useful work. Voltage [1] is defined as joules per coulumb, where joules is a measurement of energy, and coulomb is a measurement of electric charge — one coulomb is the charge carried by 6x10^18 electrons. A voltage is always between two points, so if the voltage difference between point A and point B is 1V, then moving 6e18 electrons from point A to point B will produce 1J of energy; or, conversely, it would require 1J of energy to move the electrons back “uphill” in the opposite direction. (Actually, that’s sort of backwards because electrons carry a negative charge and so flow from the negative side of a battery to the positive, but that’s not terribly important right now.) Current [2] is the rate at which electrons are flowing, defined simply as coulombs per second. You can calculate the rate of energy flow by multiplying voltage (energy per unit charge) by current (charge per second) to get watts [3], which is defined as joules per second. If you want to learn more, there’s lots of excellent resources online — but if you really want a solid understanding from first principles, you might be better off taking an introductory physics course at a community college. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power