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So, I genuinely do not get the "controversy" over the Veritasium video. AFAIU, the entire point of the video was to show that electricity travels not through wi

by tpush 5y ago

So, I genuinely do not get the "controversy" over the Veritasium video. AFAIU, the entire point of the video was to show that electricity travels not through wires but via electric fields ("through the air" so to speak). To illustrate this, he sets up an experiment with parameters such that the conclusion can only mean that some electricity has traveled to the bulb before any could arrive through/around the wires. He sets up the parameters so that the bulb would turn on by that little electricity; but that is obviously just a visual sign, and his point is valid no matter how much electricity traveled to bulb under whatever different parameters. It kinda feels like most people are missing the actual point of the video.

comex 5y ago
Anecdotally, as a novice, I was left really confused by Veritasium’s video, whereas after watching this video I feel (hopefully accurately) like I basically understand the situation. If people are missing the point of Veritasium’s video, maybe that’s because it didn’t make its point very clearly…
allemagne 5y ago
I would echo this sentiment. Did this video not confirm exactly what Veritasium claimed (the small but noticeable "instantaneous" i.e. 1/c current)?
- ehsankia 5y ago
  I think the confusion is that Veratisium's original video made it seem like this was the only/main way electricity travels, whereas in reality, there's two separate ways: One of them take's 1/c and the other takes c/2. Also, what most people think of the light bulb going on in the real world would be the c/2 one, not the 1/c one.
  - georgyo 5y ago
    What is c/2? 1/c was because the distance between the lightbulb and the battery was 1 meter. m / m/s = s With c as the numerator, I don't even know what the units of that 2 would be? m/s²?
    - ehsankia 5y ago
      Err, sorry, I mean't 0.5s, which is option A in Veratisium's video, and the time it actually takes for the current to go through the wire.
- notfed 5y ago
  The controversy is that it twists the standard definition of "on": the video boldly asserts its shocking answer of 1/d at first, only later to admit (with very little clarity) that the 1/d answer is only true if your definition of "on" is a small electromagnetic spike. This also means that the "misconception" claim is really just click-bait and really there was never any misconception.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    It's d/c, not 1/d.
afiori 5y ago
In my opinion the video made a couple of mistakes, which I think ElectroBoom's response* addresses nicely. Also its proof using the pointing vector to show the flow of energy is misleading; In the video Derek shows that the energy flows toward the lamp when the circuit is already in a stable configuration, but the point of the video is to explore what happens before the circuit reaches that configuration. This is relevant: assume that the right half of the cable is connected to the positive pole of the battery, in a stable configuration every point of the right half of the circuit has a positive charge (creating the poynting vector field as shown in the video) while 1/c seconds after the switch was closed the wire just to the right of the lightbulb will have a negative charge (the cable near it is positively charged from the battery and so the upper cable acts as a the negative half of a capacitor) which changes the direction of the poynting vector. In the end it felt like it was telling you that its message was that energy travels via the fields but what it actually said what that switches cause electric interference. *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28
- tigerlily 5y ago
  I thought it was the Poynting vector? Easy to remember because it points in the direction of power flow :)
  - wiml 5y ago
    Yup, named after English physicist John H. Poynting (1852-1914).
haberman 5y ago
If electricity doesn't travel through wires, why do resistors dissipate heat? I'm having trouble understanding what is even being claimed. Electrons are moving, without the movement of the electrons there is no electricity travel, without the wires there is no flow of electrons, so what does it mean to say that electricity doesn't travel through wires? Is the claim just that the electricity, by way of fields, travels at a rate much faster than the electrons themselves are traveling? That seems like a reasonable claim. But "electricity doesn't travel through wires" seems rather suspect.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Energy transfer can take place via electrons and fields. The latter has a common household example: the microwave oven.
  - jayknight 5y ago
    This is the best demonstration of EM fields I've seen. It kinda demonstrates what Derek was going for, but with resonant antennas the power transfer is way more that his theoretical setup. https://youtu.be/lslHtCUSfN4 https://youtu.be/lslHtCUSfN4
- tshaddox 5y ago
  > so what does it mean to say that electricity doesn't travel through wires? I think it’s specifically that the energy flux has a well-defined vector at every point in an electromagnetic field, and those vectors do not point along the wires.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The video seems to make a point that is entirely wrong: that (all/most) energy in a circuit travels directly between the source and the power sinks. Now, if you follow it carefully, it makes a different point, that is actually correct: it actually claims that some energy travels this way, since the electric field is not strictly bound to the wires, some part of it radiates out. What the video is sorely missing is a discussion of the intensity of that field, which is going to be extremely low even 1m away from the wires, for typical batteries. These effects are absolutely important though in high power cases, where even a small fraction of the energy carried along the wire leaking to nearby wires still means you can actually light a lightbulb (or burn many other things).
gcommer 5y ago
There's two bits of controversy: 1) Slander: He claims that the way EE is taught is a "lie" but leaves out the many ways that standard EE models agree with his result. 2) Clickbait / inadequate explanation: he leaves out many details in order to make his experiment seem far more mind-blowing that it really is.* Critique 1 can be countered by saying he is targeting a lay audience (say, they took 1 high school physics course). Critique 2 can be countered by saying he is targeting a slightly more advanced audience who would understand those details (say, 1 or 2 college courses). But no matter who you think he's talking to, at least one of these critiques holds. * In particular: a) He doesn't explain how "1/c" is derived from the 1m gap. b) He portrays the electrical field as totally detached from the layout of the wires. But if you rearrange his lightsecond-long wires to be a circle, the effect won't happen. c) He leaves out the fact that this experiment works even if you cut the ends of the wires, which would change many people's intuition (think of the wires more like antennas). d) His thought experiment is actually wrong: see Electroboom's video, but basically by Derek's own parameters the light would _always_ be turned on.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  The problem is that his video is a mish-mash of two different concepts that were taught perfectly well in my freshman physics course. One is that the electric field travels down a wire at the speed of light while the electrons do not. The other is induced currents by moving charges. I got the answer "wrong" by watching the video because I didn't consider the tiny amount of current induced in the other wire to be sufficient to turn on the light in any useful manner. If you had replaced the light with a sensitive ammeter and asked me what the first point in time there would be any measurable deflection from zero, then I would have gotten it correct. Could have also just asked how this works, and the success rate would have gone way up (but he'd have lost all his clickbait): https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-324-Temperature-Capacitance-Measurements/dp/B009AZ0TXE https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-324-Temperature-Capacitance-Mea... Ask bad questions, get bad answers. Nothing wrong with how physics/EE is taught.
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    This is exactly it. If being "right" or "wrong" about something involves subjective facts (is the lamp "lit" by the small amount of electricity induced by cosmic rays too?!?!) and trying to visually inspect an experiment you can't access in-person, then the only thing "wrong" is the video maker.
kzrdude 5y ago
I think "the point is being missed" in the Veritasium video, because it is obscured. It's obscured to increase the "gotcha and unintuitivity factor". Veritasium more or less makes it sound like all the interesting parts of the circuit goes through the direct line-of-sight path between the battery and the light bulb, and ignores the wire. Which is misleading. Derek would not have written tweets like this one, if his video had been more direct about what he was talking about: https://twitter.com/veritasium/status/1462115954775654405 https://twitter.com/veritasium/status/1462115954775654405 "Basically yes - you can think of it like two antennas"
it_does_follow 5y ago
> some electricity I think the key part of the controversy is the word "some". In the original Veritasium video it pretty strongly implies that enough energy to light the bulb, i.e. virtually all the electricity, is traveling instantaneously a short distance rather than "through" the wire. A big part of that video is to essentially say you're wrong if you understand electrons moving through the wire as how electricity works. The video posted here tells a different story which is essentially that the mental model of electrons flowing isn't that far off, but there is a bit of nuance when you take into account fields. This is sort of a persistent problem with "edutainment". I generally enjoy Veritasium, but this is clearly a case where the education component is weakened in order to increase the "wow!" factor of the video.
- iraqmtpizza 5y ago
  >you're wrong if you understand electrons moving through the wire as how electricity works in direct current, how does charge move from one terminal to another if it's not carried by electrons (which often act as waves)?
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    It mostly works that way, but not exclusively: the moving electrons in one circuit create an electro-magnetic field that can induce currents in other nearby conductors that are not part of the same circuit.
  - naasking 5y ago
    Moving charge isn't how power transfer in electricity mainly works, that's the point. Moving electrons is less than half of the story.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      This is an oversimplification as well though, because the model for current flow is exactly based on moving electrons and that works just fine to predict results. The battery in the experiment is explicitly based on chemistry which is exactly described as electrons being moved around.
negative_zero 5y ago
I think the controversy is because that while being technically correct (bar a couple of mistakes) there are two main issues: 1) To get the result presented heavily depends on the experimental setup and this appears to be hand-waved away (or for the cynics: deliberately obscured) as it would detract from the impact of the video. 2) The definition of "ON" in the video is not what anybody would reasonably define as "ON". This is not discussed in the video therefore potentially comes of as deceptive. As an electronic engineer I actually initially found the video confusing. I wasn't familiar with Veritasium before and I will admit my initial visceral reaction was "Oh he's just one of THOSE YouTube's and needs his clicks". It wasn't until I went back through to understand Veritasium's unspoken assumptions, simplifications and a couple of medium mistakes that I could say: yes this is technically correct. Personally I think with some better choice of wording the pitchforks wouldn't have come out as they have. Edit: Added word for clarity.
- notfed 5y ago
  I still don't buy "then yes this is correct". If "ON" is defined as a state where ANY electromagnetic field flows into the lightbulb, then it is "ON" even before you throw the switch, because other photons are already shooting around all over the place, including from the neurons in your body pondering the result just before you throw the switch. The definition of "ON" is exactly the main controversy with this and not a subtle detail.
  - Ostrogodsky 5y ago
    Yes but that does not generate clicks,views and that sweet youtube money.Sorry but I cannot stand those kind of guys (he, Mark Robber and the likes). Khan academy is doing something 1000000 times more valuable.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Even if we also accept the unspoken assumption that there are no other photons/electrical fields outside the experiment, the experiment is still wrong, since the battery will produce a teeny tiny electrical field even if the switch is off. This is much more visible if we assume the switch is at one end of the light-second long cables - throwing the switch has little impact on the experiment as explained.
GistNoesis 5y ago
Veritasium's video got my only down-vote of the year because he gave the wrong picture to people. At first order the bulk of the energy follow the wire like a train on its rails. Sure you could put a windmill turbine one meter next to the train and the wind from the train passing will make it turn immediately, but no one would argue about that the wind carry most of the energy. It works this way because the electrons are stuck on the wire like a train is stuck on its rails. The Electro-Magnetic field on the other hand like the wind is free to permeate space. What is important to understand is that electrons and EM-field are two-distinct things that are coupled together. Derek's video tried to explain transmission line theory, but didn't do the experiment while making grandiose claims about a fictional setup. Kudos to alpha phoenix for doing the experiment. Given that Derek recently created multiple "debate" videos, and that he is more interested in the way to teach Science and how to reach a lot of people than by Science itself, it feels like he probably has engineered this controversy himself for views as a meta-experiment. A lot of video responses from unknown youtubers show a better understanding than the original. For example you can see a numerical simulation of the electro magnetic fields (with Ansys) https://youtu.be/aqBDFO1bEs8?t=364 https://youtu.be/aqBDFO1bEs8?t=364 that show how electricity move (the separation distance between the wire there is only a few centimeters). The problem though is interesting if you try to understand how exactly the energy transfer is happening : Is it capacitive coupling, Is it inductive coupling, Is it EM radiation ? Which one exactly is the dominant term ? Where exactly are the electrons ? How are the electrons interacting with the field ? How can you shield it to isolate and show the various effects (magnetic shielding, electrical shielding) ?
SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
Among EEs that I've seen there are only really three points of controversy: the "any current at all turns the bulb on" bit which he didn't mention in the initial pre-video quiz (but which is super important), that he missed the unit of meters in the `1/c seconds` answer (it should be `1m/c seconds`), and (for the pedants & puzzle solvers) that he ignored the interesting bits about steady state behavior. Nothing (except forgetting the units of meters) he said is wrong. It's just a bit uncharacteristic that the video didn't match the initial quiz, and it ignores some of the most interesting bits of the behavior. But it wasn't targeted at EEs who are already familiar with the "simple" transmission line behavior, it was targeted at people who haven't ever learned or dealt with that. So the steady-state behavior would have distracted from the focus of the video IMO.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  There's also the problem of the switch: Derek's arguments still work for the circuit with the switch still off, since the battery doesn't stop producing an electric field just because the switch is off.
burnte 5y ago
> It kinda feels like most people are missing the actual point of the video. I love his videos, but the reason most people are missing the point is because he only obliquely hits the point. The title and thumb are the clickbaitiest he's ever done, and the content does a wide end-run around the facts, rather than tackling them head on. This is also why there are so many rebuttal videos that agree with him and explain it more clearly: he failed to clearly state his argument/explanation. The circumlocutious explanation does little to edify the audience or clarify the concept.
cmroanirgo 5y ago
EEVblog goes into depth about the video, basically calling it out and explaining the how and why the headline is misleading. https://youtu.be/VQsoG45Y_00 https://youtu.be/VQsoG45Y_00
sp332 5y ago
What confused me is that the effect does not actually require the circuit to go through the resistor/lightbulb. Instead of thinking in terms of a delay, you could just have the switch and power supply in their own closed circuit, and the resistor alone with maybe an antenna to boost the effect.
patmcc 5y ago
The way he describes it implies a speed-of-light violation! He's setting up a scenario where he can transfer information (by ON/OFF of a light) at 1/c. That's the controversy. It's great that he found a fun way to explain transmission theory and how wires are effectively antennas, but he's taking the same thing he initially calls out (how the general understanding most of us have is a lie) and making it even worse in another direction.
causi 5y ago
He sets up the parameters so that the bulb would turn on by that little electricity That's the bit where he's factually wrong. He's made this illogical world where the tiny amounts of electricity in field lines well outside the wire trigger the lamp but the leakage current and other sources of current don't. If you're going to be pedantic about something you have to be pedantic about the whole thing, damn it. Veritasium's video is like saying "water flowing through pipes is a LIE" because some molecules of water make it through the various seals and diffuse across the outer surface of the pipe.
- unbanned 5y ago
  I'd say most of his videos fail in similar ways.
- bagels 5y ago
  Also an absurdly long superconductor.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  The experiment can be made to work (light bulb actually lighting up ~instantly at a significant brightness), just not with a 12 V bulb. > Veritasium's video is like saying "water flowing through pipes is a LIE" because some molecules of water make it through the various seals and diffuse across the outer surface of the pipe. Not at all.
wodenokoto 5y ago
My take-away from veritsiums video was: “What’s the point of the wire?” - it’s not the length of the wire, it’s the distance between power source and consume that determines how fast power travels (how does power “know” where to go, if not following the wire?) - since power travels outside the wire, it should be okay not to plug in the power consumer. I’m pretty sure that’s completely and utterly wrong, but I don’t know what he is trying to say. So the video creates more confusion than it clears up. > It kinda feels like most people are missing the actual point of the video. Which raises an age old philosophical question about communication: who’s at fault for the misunderstanding: The sender or the receiver? I’d say it’s a bad video because it is from a trusted source of science and most people misunderstand it.
- larrydag 5y ago
  My limited understanding, according to Veritasium, is that the wire is needed to create the electro-magnetic field. Veritasium's claim is the distance of the wire is irrelevant. It's the distance between the battery (power source) and bulb (resistance) is what is relevant. AlphaPhoenix is disputing that claim saying there is a lightspeed electron "wave" through the wires. I think this is the most fascinating debate on social media currently.
nialv7 5y ago
Not answering your questions but I am so glad this "controversy" exists. I've learned so much more about this topic from all these response videos than I could have if there was no controversy.
tdrdt 5y ago
Medhi Sadaghdar (Electroboom) explains this. Medhi says the video is right but starts with a trick question. That's what the controversy is about. https://youtu.be/iph500cPK28 https://youtu.be/iph500cPK28
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> AFAIU, the entire point of the video was to show that electricity travels not through wires but via electric fields ("through the air" so to speak). Only that he doesn't context the video with that, But with a 'trick/googly' question. One of the reasonable constructive criticism I came across for this video is from Mehdi(ElectroBOOM)[1] where he explains why the real answer is not in the options offered by Derrick. Personally I like the quality of Veritasium videos, but I lately feel that the barometer has shifted towards sensationalism rather than scientific education. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28

by tpush 5y ago

comex 5y ago

Anecdotally, as a novice, I was left really confused by Veritasium’s video, whereas after watching this video I feel (hopefully accurately) like I basically understand the situation. If people are missing the point of Veritasium’s video, maybe that’s because it didn’t make its point very clearly…

allemagne 5y ago

I would echo this sentiment. Did this video not confirm exactly what Veritasium claimed (the small but noticeable "instantaneous" i.e. 1/c current)?

ehsankia 5y ago
I think the confusion is that Veratisium's original video made it seem like this was the only/main way electricity travels, whereas in reality, there's two separate ways: One of them take's 1/c and the other takes c/2. Also, what most people think of the light bulb going on in the real world would be the c/2 one, not the 1/c one.
- georgyo 5y ago
  What is c/2? 1/c was because the distance between the lightbulb and the battery was 1 meter. m / m/s = s With c as the numerator, I don't even know what the units of that 2 would be? m/s²?
  - ehsankia 5y ago
    Err, sorry, I mean't 0.5s, which is option A in Veratisium's video, and the time it actually takes for the current to go through the wire.
notfed 5y ago
The controversy is that it twists the standard definition of "on": the video boldly asserts its shocking answer of 1/d at first, only later to admit (with very little clarity) that the 1/d answer is only true if your definition of "on" is a small electromagnetic spike. This also means that the "misconception" claim is really just click-bait and really there was never any misconception.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  It's d/c, not 1/d.

afiori 5y ago

In my opinion the video made a couple of mistakes, which I think ElectroBoom's response* addresses nicely. Also its proof using the pointing vector to show the flow of energy is misleading; In the video Derek shows that the energy flows toward the lamp when the circuit is already in a stable configuration, but the point of the video is to explore what happens before the circuit reaches that configuration. This is relevant: assume that the right half of the cable is connected to the positive pole of the battery, in a stable configuration every point of the right half of the circuit has a positive charge (creating the poynting vector field as shown in the video) while 1/c seconds after the switch was closed the wire just to the right of the lightbulb will have a negative charge (the cable near it is positively charged from the battery and so the upper cable acts as a the negative half of a capacitor) which changes the direction of the poynting vector. In the end it felt like it was telling you that its message was that energy travels via the fields but what it actually said what that switches cause electric interference. *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28

tigerlily 5y ago
I thought it was the Poynting vector? Easy to remember because it points in the direction of power flow :)
- wiml 5y ago
  Yup, named after English physicist John H. Poynting (1852-1914).

haberman 5y ago

If electricity doesn't travel through wires, why do resistors dissipate heat? I'm having trouble understanding what is even being claimed. Electrons are moving, without the movement of the electrons there is no electricity travel, without the wires there is no flow of electrons, so what does it mean to say that electricity doesn't travel through wires? Is the claim just that the electricity, by way of fields, travels at a rate much faster than the electrons themselves are traveling? That seems like a reasonable claim. But "electricity doesn't travel through wires" seems rather suspect.

userbinator 5y ago
Energy transfer can take place via electrons and fields. The latter has a common household example: the microwave oven.
- jayknight 5y ago
  This is the best demonstration of EM fields I've seen. It kinda demonstrates what Derek was going for, but with resonant antennas the power transfer is way more that his theoretical setup. https://youtu.be/lslHtCUSfN4 https://youtu.be/lslHtCUSfN4
tshaddox 5y ago
> so what does it mean to say that electricity doesn't travel through wires? I think it’s specifically that the energy flux has a well-defined vector at every point in an electromagnetic field, and those vectors do not point along the wires.
tsimionescu 5y ago
The video seems to make a point that is entirely wrong: that (all/most) energy in a circuit travels directly between the source and the power sinks. Now, if you follow it carefully, it makes a different point, that is actually correct: it actually claims that some energy travels this way, since the electric field is not strictly bound to the wires, some part of it radiates out. What the video is sorely missing is a discussion of the intensity of that field, which is going to be extremely low even 1m away from the wires, for typical batteries. These effects are absolutely important though in high power cases, where even a small fraction of the energy carried along the wire leaking to nearby wires still means you can actually light a lightbulb (or burn many other things).

gcommer 5y ago

There's two bits of controversy: 1) Slander: He claims that the way EE is taught is a "lie" but leaves out the many ways that standard EE models agree with his result. 2) Clickbait / inadequate explanation: he leaves out many details in order to make his experiment seem far more mind-blowing that it really is.* Critique 1 can be countered by saying he is targeting a lay audience (say, they took 1 high school physics course). Critique 2 can be countered by saying he is targeting a slightly more advanced audience who would understand those details (say, 1 or 2 college courses). But no matter who you think he's talking to, at least one of these critiques holds. * In particular: a) He doesn't explain how "1/c" is derived from the 1m gap. b) He portrays the electrical field as totally detached from the layout of the wires. But if you rearrange his lightsecond-long wires to be a circle, the effect won't happen. c) He leaves out the fact that this experiment works even if you cut the ends of the wires, which would change many people's intuition (think of the wires more like antennas). d) His thought experiment is actually wrong: see Electroboom's video, but basically by Derek's own parameters the light would _always_ be turned on.

lamontcg 5y ago
The problem is that his video is a mish-mash of two different concepts that were taught perfectly well in my freshman physics course. One is that the electric field travels down a wire at the speed of light while the electrons do not. The other is induced currents by moving charges. I got the answer "wrong" by watching the video because I didn't consider the tiny amount of current induced in the other wire to be sufficient to turn on the light in any useful manner. If you had replaced the light with a sensitive ammeter and asked me what the first point in time there would be any measurable deflection from zero, then I would have gotten it correct. Could have also just asked how this works, and the success rate would have gone way up (but he'd have lost all his clickbait): https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-324-Temperature-Capacitance-Measurements/dp/B009AZ0TXE https://www.amazon.com/Fluke-324-Temperature-Capacitance-Mea... Ask bad questions, get bad answers. Nothing wrong with how physics/EE is taught.
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  This is exactly it. If being "right" or "wrong" about something involves subjective facts (is the lamp "lit" by the small amount of electricity induced by cosmic rays too?!?!) and trying to visually inspect an experiment you can't access in-person, then the only thing "wrong" is the video maker.

kzrdude 5y ago

I think "the point is being missed" in the Veritasium video, because it is obscured. It's obscured to increase the "gotcha and unintuitivity factor". Veritasium more or less makes it sound like all the interesting parts of the circuit goes through the direct line-of-sight path between the battery and the light bulb, and ignores the wire. Which is misleading. Derek would not have written tweets like this one, if his video had been more direct about what he was talking about: https://twitter.com/veritasium/status/1462115954775654405 https://twitter.com/veritasium/status/1462115954775654405 "Basically yes - you can think of it like two antennas"

it_does_follow 5y ago

> some electricity I think the key part of the controversy is the word "some". In the original Veritasium video it pretty strongly implies that enough energy to light the bulb, i.e. virtually all the electricity, is traveling instantaneously a short distance rather than "through" the wire. A big part of that video is to essentially say you're wrong if you understand electrons moving through the wire as how electricity works. The video posted here tells a different story which is essentially that the mental model of electrons flowing isn't that far off, but there is a bit of nuance when you take into account fields. This is sort of a persistent problem with "edutainment". I generally enjoy Veritasium, but this is clearly a case where the education component is weakened in order to increase the "wow!" factor of the video.

iraqmtpizza 5y ago
>you're wrong if you understand electrons moving through the wire as how electricity works in direct current, how does charge move from one terminal to another if it's not carried by electrons (which often act as waves)?
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  It mostly works that way, but not exclusively: the moving electrons in one circuit create an electro-magnetic field that can induce currents in other nearby conductors that are not part of the same circuit.
- naasking 5y ago
  Moving charge isn't how power transfer in electricity mainly works, that's the point. Moving electrons is less than half of the story.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    This is an oversimplification as well though, because the model for current flow is exactly based on moving electrons and that works just fine to predict results. The battery in the experiment is explicitly based on chemistry which is exactly described as electrons being moved around.

negative_zero 5y ago

I think the controversy is because that while being technically correct (bar a couple of mistakes) there are two main issues: 1) To get the result presented heavily depends on the experimental setup and this appears to be hand-waved away (or for the cynics: deliberately obscured) as it would detract from the impact of the video. 2) The definition of "ON" in the video is not what anybody would reasonably define as "ON". This is not discussed in the video therefore potentially comes of as deceptive. As an electronic engineer I actually initially found the video confusing. I wasn't familiar with Veritasium before and I will admit my initial visceral reaction was "Oh he's just one of THOSE YouTube's and needs his clicks". It wasn't until I went back through to understand Veritasium's unspoken assumptions, simplifications and a couple of medium mistakes that I could say: yes this is technically correct. Personally I think with some better choice of wording the pitchforks wouldn't have come out as they have. Edit: Added word for clarity.

notfed 5y ago
I still don't buy "then yes this is correct". If "ON" is defined as a state where ANY electromagnetic field flows into the lightbulb, then it is "ON" even before you throw the switch, because other photons are already shooting around all over the place, including from the neurons in your body pondering the result just before you throw the switch. The definition of "ON" is exactly the main controversy with this and not a subtle detail.
- Ostrogodsky 5y ago
  Yes but that does not generate clicks,views and that sweet youtube money.Sorry but I cannot stand those kind of guys (he, Mark Robber and the likes). Khan academy is doing something 1000000 times more valuable.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Even if we also accept the unspoken assumption that there are no other photons/electrical fields outside the experiment, the experiment is still wrong, since the battery will produce a teeny tiny electrical field even if the switch is off. This is much more visible if we assume the switch is at one end of the light-second long cables - throwing the switch has little impact on the experiment as explained.

GistNoesis 5y ago

Veritasium's video got my only down-vote of the year because he gave the wrong picture to people. At first order the bulk of the energy follow the wire like a train on its rails. Sure you could put a windmill turbine one meter next to the train and the wind from the train passing will make it turn immediately, but no one would argue about that the wind carry most of the energy. It works this way because the electrons are stuck on the wire like a train is stuck on its rails. The Electro-Magnetic field on the other hand like the wind is free to permeate space. What is important to understand is that electrons and EM-field are two-distinct things that are coupled together. Derek's video tried to explain transmission line theory, but didn't do the experiment while making grandiose claims about a fictional setup. Kudos to alpha phoenix for doing the experiment. Given that Derek recently created multiple "debate" videos, and that he is more interested in the way to teach Science and how to reach a lot of people than by Science itself, it feels like he probably has engineered this controversy himself for views as a meta-experiment. A lot of video responses from unknown youtubers show a better understanding than the original. For example you can see a numerical simulation of the electro magnetic fields (with Ansys) https://youtu.be/aqBDFO1bEs8?t=364 https://youtu.be/aqBDFO1bEs8?t=364 that show how electricity move (the separation distance between the wire there is only a few centimeters). The problem though is interesting if you try to understand how exactly the energy transfer is happening : Is it capacitive coupling, Is it inductive coupling, Is it EM radiation ? Which one exactly is the dominant term ? Where exactly are the electrons ? How are the electrons interacting with the field ? How can you shield it to isolate and show the various effects (magnetic shielding, electrical shielding) ?

SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago

Among EEs that I've seen there are only really three points of controversy: the "any current at all turns the bulb on" bit which he didn't mention in the initial pre-video quiz (but which is super important), that he missed the unit of meters in the `1/c seconds` answer (it should be `1m/c seconds`), and (for the pedants & puzzle solvers) that he ignored the interesting bits about steady state behavior. Nothing (except forgetting the units of meters) he said is wrong. It's just a bit uncharacteristic that the video didn't match the initial quiz, and it ignores some of the most interesting bits of the behavior. But it wasn't targeted at EEs who are already familiar with the "simple" transmission line behavior, it was targeted at people who haven't ever learned or dealt with that. So the steady-state behavior would have distracted from the focus of the video IMO.

tsimionescu 5y ago
There's also the problem of the switch: Derek's arguments still work for the circuit with the switch still off, since the battery doesn't stop producing an electric field just because the switch is off.

burnte 5y ago

> It kinda feels like most people are missing the actual point of the video. I love his videos, but the reason most people are missing the point is because he only obliquely hits the point. The title and thumb are the clickbaitiest he's ever done, and the content does a wide end-run around the facts, rather than tackling them head on. This is also why there are so many rebuttal videos that agree with him and explain it more clearly: he failed to clearly state his argument/explanation. The circumlocutious explanation does little to edify the audience or clarify the concept.

cmroanirgo 5y ago

EEVblog goes into depth about the video, basically calling it out and explaining the how and why the headline is misleading. https://youtu.be/VQsoG45Y_00 https://youtu.be/VQsoG45Y_00

sp332 5y ago

What confused me is that the effect does not actually require the circuit to go through the resistor/lightbulb. Instead of thinking in terms of a delay, you could just have the switch and power supply in their own closed circuit, and the resistor alone with maybe an antenna to boost the effect.

patmcc 5y ago

The way he describes it implies a speed-of-light violation! He's setting up a scenario where he can transfer information (by ON/OFF of a light) at 1/c. That's the controversy. It's great that he found a fun way to explain transmission theory and how wires are effectively antennas, but he's taking the same thing he initially calls out (how the general understanding most of us have is a lie) and making it even worse in another direction.

causi 5y ago

He sets up the parameters so that the bulb would turn on by that little electricity That's the bit where he's factually wrong. He's made this illogical world where the tiny amounts of electricity in field lines well outside the wire trigger the lamp but the leakage current and other sources of current don't. If you're going to be pedantic about something you have to be pedantic about the whole thing, damn it. Veritasium's video is like saying "water flowing through pipes is a LIE" because some molecules of water make it through the various seals and diffuse across the outer surface of the pipe.

unbanned 5y ago
I'd say most of his videos fail in similar ways.
bagels 5y ago
Also an absurdly long superconductor.
formerly_proven 5y ago
The experiment can be made to work (light bulb actually lighting up ~instantly at a significant brightness), just not with a 12 V bulb. > Veritasium's video is like saying "water flowing through pipes is a LIE" because some molecules of water make it through the various seals and diffuse across the outer surface of the pipe. Not at all.

wodenokoto 5y ago

My take-away from veritsiums video was: “What’s the point of the wire?” - it’s not the length of the wire, it’s the distance between power source and consume that determines how fast power travels (how does power “know” where to go, if not following the wire?) - since power travels outside the wire, it should be okay not to plug in the power consumer. I’m pretty sure that’s completely and utterly wrong, but I don’t know what he is trying to say. So the video creates more confusion than it clears up. > It kinda feels like most people are missing the actual point of the video. Which raises an age old philosophical question about communication: who’s at fault for the misunderstanding: The sender or the receiver? I’d say it’s a bad video because it is from a trusted source of science and most people misunderstand it.

larrydag 5y ago
My limited understanding, according to Veritasium, is that the wire is needed to create the electro-magnetic field. Veritasium's claim is the distance of the wire is irrelevant. It's the distance between the battery (power source) and bulb (resistance) is what is relevant. AlphaPhoenix is disputing that claim saying there is a lightspeed electron "wave" through the wires. I think this is the most fascinating debate on social media currently.

nialv7 5y ago

Not answering your questions but I am so glad this "controversy" exists. I've learned so much more about this topic from all these response videos than I could have if there was no controversy.

tdrdt 5y ago

Medhi Sadaghdar (Electroboom) explains this. Medhi says the video is right but starts with a trick question. That's what the controversy is about. https://youtu.be/iph500cPK28 https://youtu.be/iph500cPK28

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

> AFAIU, the entire point of the video was to show that electricity travels not through wires but via electric fields ("through the air" so to speak). Only that he doesn't context the video with that, But with a 'trick/googly' question. One of the reasonable constructive criticism I came across for this video is from Mehdi(ElectroBOOM)[1] where he explains why the real answer is not in the options offered by Derrick. Personally I like the quality of Veritasium videos, but I lately feel that the barometer has shifted towards sensationalism rather than scientific education. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iph500cPK28