what kind of flow is the electric current does it flow negatively?
2006-07-27 03:21:46 · 4 answers · asked by goring 6 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Argueably, it might be William Gilbert around 1600, though he didn't formalize or quantize the value of a current. There are many who dabbled in electricity before Volta, and well before Thompson came up with the idea of an electron.
Electrons (negative charge) move in a wire. Protons (positive charge) sit still. If you think of a negatively charged side of a capacitor, it has a lot of extra electrons, while the positively charged side has a lack of electrons. If you hook the positive side to the negative side, the electrons flow toward the positive terminal, but conventional electronics says that the current is flowing from the positive to the negative. It pretends that the positive charge is flowing to the negative terminal. Technically, it makes no difference; it's a glass of water that's half-full or half-empty; they're the same thing viewed different ways.
2006-07-27 03:38:50 · answer #1 · answered by Tom J 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I believe the 1st person to create electric current was Volta, in 1800. Is that what you want to know?
From what I understand of the discovery of electricity, they did a collaborative job to understand what electricity really was.
Galvani, Ampere, Edison, Faraday, maxwell and a lot of others did a lot for the understanding of electricity.
As for your second question, in the 19th century, the scientists, not being able to "see" matter as we do now (they didn't have the technology for that), couldn't know if the "electric particles" were positive or negative. So they collectively decided upon a convention and decided that "current" would go the same way as would positively charged particles, that is from the positive to the negative ends of a circuit... Of course, everyone knows that electrons carry electricity, and they're negatively charged particles (so they got it wrong : only had a 50/50 chance of getting it right, after all)
2006-07-27 03:28:01 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Galvani
2006-07-27 03:28:53 · answer #3 · answered by ag_iitkgp 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
André-Marie Ampère -- hence the name amp for a measure of current
2006-07-27 04:08:25 · answer #4 · answered by Blues Man 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋