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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 eart

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

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