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Re: [Amps] "Conventional" current flow

To: Amps group <amps@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [Amps] "Conventional" current flow
From: Bill Turner <dezrat@outlook.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 23:23:29 +0000
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
On Thu, 8 Dec 2016 20:41:40 -0700, Jim wrote:

>Hey Bill, Why're you picking on me? I'm just the messenger, here! Really,
>I'm not making this stuff up. What I've said is what the entire scientific
>community believes, and also virtually every electrical engineer who didn't
>cheat on his college exams. 

At one time the entire scientific community believed the earth was
flat, there were only four elements, the sun revolved around the earth
and disease was caused by "vapors". 



>Movement is not a real
>substance, and neither is electric current. Current is an abstraction. Like
>I said earlier, you can't weigh it on a scale, or hold it your hand, like
>you can with real particles.

Current is not an abstraction. It is measured in cubic feet per second
for water, miles per hour for air and amperes for electricity. 

>Fo rexample, if you measure the plate current flowing from your HV power supply
>through a copper wire into the plate cap of your 3-500Z linear amp, your
>plate current meter is actually measuring the magnetic field caused by the
>charges moving in the copper wire.

Not necessarily. You could also measure the voltage drop across a
resistor using a digital volt meter. No magnetics involved.


>Furthermore, you can't tell from the plate current measurement whether the
>charges in the wire are positive charges moving up the wire, or negative
>charges moving down the wire. 

Positive charges don't move through a wire. Protons don't move through
wires nor to positively charged ions. Only electrons. Protons and ions
can move through a vacuum, but not through a wire. 



That's why current is such a useful concept:

I agree there are concepts which may be useful but which are still
wrong. For example when learning celestial navigation it is easier to
assume the sun revolves around the earth than to grasp what is
actually happening, and either way the end result is correct, but that
doesn't make it true, just like "conventional current".

73, Bill W6WRT
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