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Is electricity matter?

#1
Magical Realist Offline
http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?k...y%20matter.

"Is electricity matter? I have found many different websites that say it is, but others say that it isn't. Would you please clear this up?"


Answer 1:
"Electricity is the movement of electrons (or anything else that has electric charge). Electrons are matter. However, electrons by themselves are not electricity. Because electricity requires movement of matter, you could say that it's matter or that it's not, depending on your definition of matter.

Let me give an example of what's basically the same question and which might be able to show why this is a confusing question: is wind matter? Wind is the movement of air. Air is matter. Does this mean that wind is also matter? (Do you see why this makes definitions unclear?)

Normally, I would have to regard electricity as a form of energy rather than matter, but unlike "pure" forms of energy such as light, electricity needs matter to exist."


Answer 2:
"It's tricky because the word "electricity" has an everyday usage that refers to energy or power (power is energy per time). Neither energy nor power is matter.

In physics, usually the word "electricity" isn't really used. "Electric current" is more common, and is defined as the flow of charges, where the charges are held by particles (electrons). Electrons have mass, so they are definitely matter. But is the *flow* of electrons the matter? I would argue no, but I can understand why it may be debated on the web."


Answer 3:
"This is an interesting question, but it is a question really of semantics. Meaning that it is a discussion about what the specific definition of "electricity" is, which is vaguer than you might think. You should focus on learning the fundamentals of how electricity works, because then you will understand why somebody would think one way or another.

You can look up "electricity" in a dictionary, encyclopedia, or textbook and probably get several slightly different but similar answers. I would say that "electricity" refers to the flow of energy or information by the movement of charged particles. In most cases those charged particles are the negatively charged electrons orbiting atomic nuclei, but in some cases like batteries you can have movement of positively charged ions (atoms or molecules missing an electron or two, leaving them with a positive charge). These charged particles have mass, and are thus "matter". So based on this definition I would say that matter is required for electricity to work, but electricity itself is not the matter but the interaction of the the electric charges that these particles have by electric and magnetic fields."
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#2
C C Offline
Electricity misconceptions
http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html#light

THE "ELECTRICITY" INSIDE OF WIRES MOVES AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT?

Wrong. In metals, electric current is a flow of electrons. Many books claim that these electrons flow at the speed of light. This is incorrect. Electrons in an electric current actually flow quite slowly; at speeds on the order of centimeters per minute. And in AC circuits the electrons don't really "flow" much at all, instead they sit in place and vibrate. It's the energy in the circuit which flows fast, not the electrons.

Metals are always full of movable electrons. In a simple circuit, all of the wires are totally packed full of electrons all the time. And when a battery or generator pumps the electrons at one point in the circuit, electrons in the entire loop of the circuit are forced to flow, and energy spreads almost instantly throughout the entire circuit. This happens even though the electrons move very slowly.



How Does Electricity Work?
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/how...city-work/

People switch on lamps and other electric devices, thinking once the circuit is connected, one electron jumps from the switch to the lamp at the speed of light, and the lamp is on. They are very wrong. [...] If electrons want to move in a wire, they have billions of barriers ahead: other atoms and electrons. [...] When a battery is inserted in a circuit ... it takes ten seconds for an electron to move one millimeter. n a simple six-inch flashlight, an electron has to travel 12 inches, or 30 centimeters, to make a whole-circuit trip. That will take 50 minutes. In a normal room, the electron has to move around ten meters, and this will take 28 hours. Still, electric devices work immediately.

[...] as explained in the previous section, electrons cannot move quickly because of all the wire atoms. When the electron moves outside the battery, it hits another free electron in the wire. The newly-hit electron moves forward and bumps into the next electron, and so on. Thus, the current is the result of electrons moving in place and hitting their neighbors. This means all the electrons in the wire remain where they were, and no electron is actually thrown out of the chain.

So, why do circuits work so fast? An example will make it easy to answer. If a train carrying 100 cars and an engine in the back starts moving, it takes a long time for the engine to get where the first car is. However, the first car starts moving almost as soon as the engine does, because the push from the engine is transferred through all the cars to the first. The same thing happens in a circuit with electrons.

The electricity in a battery is different from that of the house. The battery always pushes electrons out of the negative side. But in a house, the electricity is pushed and pulled back all the time over and over again. In the United States, electricity is pushed and pulled into a house 60 times per second. In Europe, it happens 50 times a second. Other countries use one of these standards.

Regardless of the type of electricity – battery or commercial – what happens is that the electrons do not run around the wires and circuits. They just send the movement energy to the first electron in the, and the current is created.
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