The electric current in a metal conductor is carried by?

Answer 1

It depends on how one was trained. A lot of schools teach current flow as positive to negative (aka "Hole Flow") while others, including military schools teach current flow as negative to positive ("Electron Flow").

Both methods arrive at pretty much the same results for most purposes.

As current flows through a conductor, the outer most electron of that conductor gets excited enough to temporarily be shed by its atom. At this point the electron is swapped with a near by atom's "hole", or lack of an electron in it's outer most layer.

Once the electron has released it's energy into the neighbor atom, the neighbor atom is in an excited state and the process repeats.

There must always be an exchange of a hole and an electron for current to flow.

I'll admit this is a simplified explanation, but it should be good enough for general understanding.

Answer 2

a chemist will tell you metal is a good electrical conductor because the outer most electrons are only loosely "bonded" to the central atorm. in fact, a better discription would be these electrons form a kind of cloud travelling easily through the atomic framework that is a metal wire. It is not the electron that travels through the wire carring current, but rather a pressure influence. If an electron get popped into the metal at one end, it instanteneously increases the field pressure in the entire cloud and that influences an electron to pop out at the other end of the wire. the closest comparison is an ordinary garden hose. opening or closing the valve at the house end causes a nearly instanteneous change in the flow pressure at the nozzle end. It is this pressure field that carries the effect of the current to the next element in the circuit. It will take many minutes for a specific drop of water to get from the house to the nozzle down a 100 foot length of hose. Similarly the electron drift velocity in a conductor is very slow considering the corresponding effects of current change propagate at nearly the speed of light.

The best answer is the current is carried by the influence of the electro-magnetic field that exists around any material that conducts electricity.

Answer 3

electrons. in a metal the molecules line up like little squares, and when electric current is applied to one it knocks one loose to the one beside it till it hits the other end of the length of wire/termination points. (generally speaking in the easiest visual i could think of)

Answer 4

electric current is the movement of electrons from atom to atom. it is also shown as the movement of the positive charge from atom to atom depending on which method is being used to show the flow of currrent as in from positive to negative, and negative to positive.
an engineer looks at it from one aspect, but an electrician looks at it from another. the engineer will see the positive (hot) side and the electrician from the negative (ground or common) side.

Answer 5

Mexicans - no wait, was this another immigration joke?

Answer 6

How old *are* you, anyway? Electrons!