4 ms·

Does the thing at one end of the wire get heavier and the thing at the other end lighter? Because of the mass of the electrons moved from one thing to the othe

Does the thing at one end of the wire get heavier and the thing at the other end lighter? Because of the mass of the electrons moved from one thing to the other.

mike_hock 3y ago
An electron has .05% the mass of a proton, and only a small imbalance of electrons and protons is necessary to generate extremely strong electric fields by earthly standards.
- swayvil 3y ago
  That's fabulous man, but it doesn't actually answer my question. If the answer is yes then we have moving electrons. If the answer is no then maybe we don't.
  - senseiV 3y ago
    Bruh its simple physics, does one end or the other get lighter, by all measures we care about, not really, the mass of a proton or electron is beyond any consumer hardware measurement. I doubt it would matter beyond extreme scenarios or controlled experiment
  - ben_w 3y ago
    Imagine a loop of pipe filled with water, and a pump pushing the water: The water moves around the pipe. The movement doesn't cause any part of the pipe to get heavier. Imagine a different scenario, where the pipe ends in a big box: This time the box does fill up with water, and gets heavier. Mapping the analogy from water back to electrons: a loop of pipe is like a loop of wire and a battery; while the pipe ending with a box becomes a capacitor or antenna, and that will leak[0] before you can measure the mass change — but technically yes the the mass of any given wall of a capacitor or of an antenna will be very slightly changed by this sort of thing. For a sense of scale, to get a total charge of 1 coulomb using electrons, the mass of those electrons will be about 5.7 nanograms, and trying to squeeze that much charge into the last millimetre of some length of a wire 1mm in cross section diameter, involves about 60% of the energy in this explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKn_3iJOP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKn_3iJOP4 As nothing gets close to being able to hold that kind of energy, even if you're trying to accumulate a lot of excess electrons, those electrons leak well before even coming close to nanograms of excess mass. [0] The bit on the top with the sparks coming out is a capacitive electrode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil
rcxdude 3y ago
Yes, but to an unmeasurably small degree. Electromagnetism is very strong, so you never see the density of electrons change by very much, or the situation will correct itself quite violently.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
calamari4065 3y ago
No. Imagine a simple circuit, say a light bulb and a battery. Electrons move from the negative terminal, through the bulb, and back to the battery. The net change in number of electrons at any one point is zero. The energy isn't in the electrons themselves, but in the motion of those electrons. Electrons in must equal erlctrons out. Even a battery doesn't store electrons. It uses the energy carried by those electrons to reverse a chemical reaction. The energy is stored chemically. If you think about it, the electrons belong to the physical materials in the circuit. You can't really add or remove electrons* as electron count is a fundamental property of those atoms. If you somehow removed electrons from the system, you'd be changing those atoms and the system would no longer be able to pass current at all. *you can, of course ionize atoms by adding or removing electrons, but that's not exactly what happens in electric circuits Electrons are not electricity, they just carry it. Kind of. It's really complicated.
- swayvil 3y ago
  So electrons aren't actually moving from one place to another?
  - selimthegrim 3y ago
    Ben Franklin’s definition of current, otherwise known as the standard one, has positive charge carriers.
    - calamari4065 3y ago
      You're talking about conventional current, and it's nothing more than a polite fiction. We model circuits as current moving from positive to negative, but with the implicit understanding that the real charge moves the opposite direction. Positive charge carriers do not actually exist[0]. There's only electrons and holes they can go into. We can talk about the movement of holes, but that's a virtual charge carrier at best. Conventional current is just a convention. It's what we started with (because Franklin was wrong) and it's too much effort to change now. In practice, the distinction almost never matters. Sometimes it does, but not enough that it's worth overhauling the entire field of electronics. [0] of course positrons and protons exist, but they aren't relevant to electronic circuits
wtallis 3y ago
A difference in voltage between two points in a circuit is a difference in concentration of electrons at those two points, and since electrons have mass that's not quite zero, the location with the higher concentration of electrons will have very slightly higher mass density. But this is true for any electric potential (voltage) difference, whether or not there's any current flowing.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anArbitraryOne 3y ago
See the vsauce video "what does the internet weigh"
rini17 3y ago
The answer is yes but you can't practically observe it. The electrons repel each other so strongly that you can't accumulate enough of them in one place to be able to observe change of mass of that object. You can move whole charged atoms, that's a form of electricity too, and it can add observable amount of mass, like with electroplating or welding. But these very quickly turn electrically neutral after depositing.

Does the thing at one end of the wire get heavier and the thing at the other end lighter? Because of the mass of the electrons moved from one thing to the other.

mike_hock 3y ago

An electron has .05% the mass of a proton, and only a small imbalance of electrons and protons is necessary to generate extremely strong electric fields by earthly standards.

swayvil 3y ago
That's fabulous man, but it doesn't actually answer my question. If the answer is yes then we have moving electrons. If the answer is no then maybe we don't.
- senseiV 3y ago
  Bruh its simple physics, does one end or the other get lighter, by all measures we care about, not really, the mass of a proton or electron is beyond any consumer hardware measurement. I doubt it would matter beyond extreme scenarios or controlled experiment
- ben_w 3y ago
  Imagine a loop of pipe filled with water, and a pump pushing the water: The water moves around the pipe. The movement doesn't cause any part of the pipe to get heavier. Imagine a different scenario, where the pipe ends in a big box: This time the box does fill up with water, and gets heavier. Mapping the analogy from water back to electrons: a loop of pipe is like a loop of wire and a battery; while the pipe ending with a box becomes a capacitor or antenna, and that will leak[0] before you can measure the mass change — but technically yes the the mass of any given wall of a capacitor or of an antenna will be very slightly changed by this sort of thing. For a sense of scale, to get a total charge of 1 coulomb using electrons, the mass of those electrons will be about 5.7 nanograms, and trying to squeeze that much charge into the last millimetre of some length of a wire 1mm in cross section diameter, involves about 60% of the energy in this explosion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKn_3iJOP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKn_3iJOP4 As nothing gets close to being able to hold that kind of energy, even if you're trying to accumulate a lot of excess electrons, those electrons leak well before even coming close to nanograms of excess mass. [0] The bit on the top with the sparks coming out is a capacitive electrode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

rcxdude 3y ago

Yes, but to an unmeasurably small degree. Electromagnetism is very strong, so you never see the density of electrons change by very much, or the situation will correct itself quite violently.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

calamari4065 3y ago

No. Imagine a simple circuit, say a light bulb and a battery. Electrons move from the negative terminal, through the bulb, and back to the battery. The net change in number of electrons at any one point is zero. The energy isn't in the electrons themselves, but in the motion of those electrons. Electrons in must equal erlctrons out. Even a battery doesn't store electrons. It uses the energy carried by those electrons to reverse a chemical reaction. The energy is stored chemically. If you think about it, the electrons belong to the physical materials in the circuit. You can't really add or remove electrons* as electron count is a fundamental property of those atoms. If you somehow removed electrons from the system, you'd be changing those atoms and the system would no longer be able to pass current at all. *you can, of course ionize atoms by adding or removing electrons, but that's not exactly what happens in electric circuits Electrons are not electricity, they just carry it. Kind of. It's really complicated.

swayvil 3y ago
So electrons aren't actually moving from one place to another?
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Ben Franklin’s definition of current, otherwise known as the standard one, has positive charge carriers.
  - calamari4065 3y ago
    You're talking about conventional current, and it's nothing more than a polite fiction. We model circuits as current moving from positive to negative, but with the implicit understanding that the real charge moves the opposite direction. Positive charge carriers do not actually exist[0]. There's only electrons and holes they can go into. We can talk about the movement of holes, but that's a virtual charge carrier at best. Conventional current is just a convention. It's what we started with (because Franklin was wrong) and it's too much effort to change now. In practice, the distinction almost never matters. Sometimes it does, but not enough that it's worth overhauling the entire field of electronics. [0] of course positrons and protons exist, but they aren't relevant to electronic circuits

wtallis 3y ago

A difference in voltage between two points in a circuit is a difference in concentration of electrons at those two points, and since electrons have mass that's not quite zero, the location with the higher concentration of electrons will have very slightly higher mass density. But this is true for any electric potential (voltage) difference, whether or not there's any current flowing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anArbitraryOne 3y ago

See the vsauce video "what does the internet weigh"

rini17 3y ago

The answer is yes but you can't practically observe it. The electrons repel each other so strongly that you can't accumulate enough of them in one place to be able to observe change of mass of that object. You can move whole charged atoms, that's a form of electricity too, and it can add observable amount of mass, like with electroplating or welding. But these very quickly turn electrically neutral after depositing.