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Hey, I wish electrons were assigned a positive charge and protons a negative one. Way back when. But oh well now.
by test6554 2y ago
Hey, I wish electrons were assigned a positive charge and protons a negative one. Way back when. But oh well now.
- echoangle 2y agoCan you explain why switching the names would be better? I don’t get it
- cocoa19 2y agoI remember some messy conventions in electronics as a reason. The conventional flow of current goes from positive terminal to negative. But electrons actually flow from negative terminal to positive.
- thaumasiotes 2y agoBy convention, electrical current flows in the direction of the movement of positive charge. However, in the typical case, what's moving is electrons, which means the "current" is flowing in the opposite direction of the movement of the electrons. This is stupid and everyone hates it.
- djaro 2y agoBecause what we call electricity is electrons moving. So it would make sense for electrons to have the electric charge. Now we are in a weird situation where current flows from positive to negative, but electrons flow from negative to positive. It would be a lot more logical if the direction of the electrons was the direction of the current, but the name was arbitrarily decided before we knew what electrons were.
- opello 2y agoThis seems to warrant an appreciation for the nuances of the electromagnetic field, electric potential, and that electron drift in a conductor isn't really the same as varying potentials in the electromagnetic field.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoElectricity is generally defined as a flow of electrical charge(s). Nobody except scientists care to know which way the electrons went because we never run out of them.
- WorldMaker 2y agoChemists building batteries might disagree with you. They have to understand which direction the electrons flow and which elements they are using have the free electrons to spare.
- 1970-01-01 2y agoBy definition, chemists are scientists.
- samatman 2y agoIn addition to the sibling comments, I have a somewhat esoteric reason to wish that the signs of electric charge were reversed. In the coordinate system of an atom, the nucleus is at the origin, 0, while the electrons are a positive distance from that core. 0 is not negative, obviously, but it's non-positive. When terminology is concordant in this way, the topic is easier for a student to grasp. When discordant, harder. There's little chance for this wart to be remedied, invalidating every paper written up to that point is a bit of a non-starter. But I dislike it nonetheless.
- abecedarius 2y agoAlso when you're learning organic chemistry, where you need to mentally push electrons around molecules which are diagrammed in a highly compressed notation, the negative charges add just a bit more to your working-memory load (which might've already been on edge of what you can handle without dropping something) until you've had enough practice to compile the patterns down. Negating when you move electrons is just one more step, but so is negation within a complex expression in language or programming, and we do try to avoid piling that up.
- samatman 2y agoChemistry was my major, and I considered adding this very point, but wasn't sure I could do a good job of explaining what the problem is. You did a great job there ^_^. Yes: there are positive 'holes' that you push a negative number to and then subtract. This is entirely backward and adds considerable difficulty to an already difficult operation.
- thayne 2y agoBecause in an electrical current it is electrons that move (usually, unless you have a hydrogen plasma or something), so since electrons have a negative charge, the direction of the positive current is the opposite of the direction the electrons are flowing.
- randomdata 2y ago> and protons a negative one. A "pro" negative? That introduces a whole new confusion.
- YoshiRulz 2y agoIt's the Greek "proto-", not the Latinate "pro-".
- 1970-01-01 2y agoI had a chemistry professor that tried to teach like that: "Lets review some terms. Hydro. What should you think when you hear the word hydro?" "Hydrogen?" "No! Water! Isn't it obvious?"
- test6554 2y agoHey, as long as we are rewriting history, we could go with different names too. Both the names of the things and which one was positive were arbitrarily assigned and I just think some mistakes were made… from a teachability/usability perspective. Like the original USB inventor not making usb reversible from the start.