does electricity weigh anything?

Question

For example would a used batttery weight less than a new one. Maby like 100,000,000,000,000,000,000th of a pound or something like that.

Answer 1

Yes the electricity is electron flow,which is the number of electrons flowing in a cross section of a conductor for one oscilation .
Electrons have an electrical mass which is equal to
9.1 x10^-31kg.
so if you take the number of electron per oscilation times the mass of the electron you have the total electrical mass flowing,
You take the total mass(assuming acceleration relative to the earth's center of mass)times 9.8 m/sec^2 would equal the weight of the electrical mass flowing.Hence a used battery would weight less.
For the simple reason that in the reaction gas has formed and evaporated and the excess electrons have dissipated and lost mass in the form of heat.
The weight difference can only be calculated. since the mass loss is very minute.The mass lost would be energy expanded by the battery divided by C^2.

Answer 2

Electricity is the flow of electrons which have weight, although it is very small, even compared to other small things like the weight of a proton or neutron the other major components of an atom. an electron is about 1/1800 the weight of an proton or neutron. However in your battery the electrons flow from an area of excess electron deployment (+) to an area of a minimal electron deployment (-) Therefore, the analogy continues in that the electrons flow from one end of the battery to the other and no real change is experienced by the battery at the end of its life. Other electrical situations may actually exhibit the situation you speak of but the change is literally infinitesimal and is therefore never a true component in the engineering of these systems.AC electrical systems actually banter these electrons back and forth in a cyclic manner and therefore the flow of electrons is simply that they flow but flow only back and forth across a particular point in the system.

Answer 3

Electricity itself doesn't weigh anything. This is because as an electron flows through an object it is replaced by another electron. As far as a battery, the electrons are flowing from one part of the battery into another. Therefore, in most situations a charged battery weighs the same as a dead battery. However, if your circuit took some charge away (such as a capacitor or another battery) then it is possible that the dead battery would weigh less.

When you build a charge on an object you do increase (- charge)/decrease (+ charge) its mass depending on how much charge you give it. For every gain (-) of an electron the object will weigh 9.11x10^-31 kg larger and vice versa for a loss (+)of an electron.

I remember doing problems similar to this in my Physics Text.

Answer 4

I would have to say yes. Electricity is electrons moving from one surface to another to balance the charge. Electrons weigh next to nothing so it wouldn't show up on any commercial scale. As for the battery thing, go try it. do it with some cheap AA or something, not some expensive car battery although that would provide more electricity so it might register more. I say try wikipedia

Answer 5

well a used battery may weigh less than a new one but only because the electricity comes from a chemical reaction. some of the chemicals will get used up in a battery and escape into the air. for example if you burn a log of wood, what your left with in the fireplace is just the ashes everything else burned off in the smoke; the ashes weigh far less than the log you started with.

Answer 6

Electricity is the movement of electrons through conductive material. Electrons do have mass and therefore do weigh something. Here is a link to Wikipedia that describes the properties of electrons.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron

Answer 7

Electricity doesn't weigh anything because it has no mass. It's a form of energy. A used battery is something else again, because it may have absorbed moisture or reacted chemically with air during its lifetime.

Answer 8

in case of batery charge flow results in current
when battery get discharged these chargees become uncharged

energy is definitely lost by batt. but that is not related 2 any mass loss cuz electrical energy is lost and electrical energy is energy due to prop of chemical used

u can c there is no loss of mass

Answer 9

no. Actually electricity is an imaginary concept for what scientists call "ether"

Answer 10

no, its like light. try weighing some, your scale will show nothing.