Electricity Parodox?

Question

Electricity is said to be flowing from the positive end to the negative end...
But electricity is the flow of electrons...

So why are electrons, which are negatively charged, flowing to the negative side?


My guess is that they got it wrong when they said electricity flows from positive to negative...

Answer 1

We owe this mistake to Benjamin Franklin if I remember correctly. When people were first describing electric current, they thought of charge in a wire as flowing like water in a pipe. You could either think of it as positive charge flowing one way or negative charge flowing the other way. They just guessed wrong. We still stick with this idea of positive charge flowing for historical reasons. Don't be too harsh on old Ben though...remember he didn't know anything about electrons or the nuclei of atoms.

Answer 2

Yes, this is confusing, but you don't quite have it right.

Actually, the electrons are flowing from the negative pole to the positive pole. For calculations and for other technical reasons, though, we tend to think of the electrical power as flowing from the positive to the negative, even though the electrons are going the other way.

Even though I'm a scientist, it took me years to fully understand this, and even though I now do I can't explain it very well. Expect it to be a bit odd and confusing. The only thing that really matters, though, is the potential difference. I actually have an old tractor that's positive ground. Systems cab be designed so that they can use the electrons flowing either way.

So.....think of the electrons flowing from the negative to the positive, but the power going from positive to negative. That's an incomplete explanation, and not a very good one, but it is hard to explain. Any further questions I can help with email me at
[e-mail]

Answer 3

Positive and negative are arbitrary names given to the charges of the proton and electron. The only thing that is fundamentally true is that they are opposites. It does not matter which one you name "positive" and which you name "negative". However, it is important for people to be able to understand each other, so we need a convention for naming.

Benjamin Franklin thought that protons were the things that flowed through wires. Later, it was discovered that this was wrong, and it was really the electrons that flowed. However, the naming convention that was already developed stuck.

If you look at a car battery, the terminal misleadingly labeled "positive" (the red one) is the dangerous one. It is actually charged with electrons. The electrons then flow through the circuit to the terminal that is depleted of electrons (which is misleadingly labeled "negative").

It does not matter which naming convention you choose. As long as you are consistent, you will get the right answer.

Answer 4

Which direction does electricity flow is a question that can be answered only if we know if we are talking about electrons (negative to positive) or holes - which is a positively charged entity produced when an electron leaves a normally electrically neutral atom (and these flow positive to negative.)
This distinction is especially important in solid state electronics where we have both P and N type semiconductor materials.

Answer 5

There are two models of the flow of electricity. The first is conventional flow, this is + to -. This was widely accepted by the scientific community, they got it wrong. The other model is electron flow, which is - to +, this is right. For years the electronics community tried to explain this to the scientific community and only recently has the scientific community admitted they were wrong, and that electrons really do flow from - to +. Commonly these days, electricity is said to flow from - to +.

Answer 6

The problem is actually in your comment that electricity is the flow of electrons... actually, it is the flow of electrons AND positively charged particles. Check out this article.

http://amasci.com/amateur/elecdir.html

Answer 7

The analysis of circuits using postive current flow started back in the 19th century and it yields the right answers so it just got carried on.