I can easily swing either way so the arguments are meaningless and
unimportant in real life.
The old saying was "There are 3 ways to do something: the right way, the
wrong way, and the Navy way." With 28 years in the USN, mostly Reserves, I
just go with the flow!
Carl
KM1H
----- Original Message -----
From: "Manfred Mornhinweg" <manfred@ludens.cl>
To: <amps@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2012 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: [Amps] Zener Screen Regulators
In this particular matter about the true direction of current flow, I
agree with Bill, for a change... While it is understandable that back in
the dark ages it was defined the wrong way, because people simply didn't
know a lot about electricity, it's stupid that this mistake is still being
taught.
In an abstract way, I have no trouble at all to imagine current as a flow
of charges, and I'm comfortable with analyzing circuits using either
"conventional" or true sense of current flow. But I see no point in using
the "conventional" sense. Specially when it comes pretty physical, almost
mechanical things, like the operation principles of vacuum tubes.
In semiconductors it's easy to work with electrons and "holes" as
equivalent but opposite charge carriers, but the truth (according to
present day knowledge of physics!) is that ONLY the electrons actually
move around any charges. A hole moving is nothing else than an electron
moving in the opposite direction. And in tubes there are no such "holes",
and any electronics teacher would have a pretty hard time teaching their
internal operation based on conventional flow sense of current. When it
comes to cathode ray tubes, we are at the summit of stupidity if we try to
explain them with current flow from positive to negative!
Years ago I started writing a book about electronics, in a practical way.
I never quite finished it. But in that book I mention "conventional" flow
sense of current only as a historic curiosity and a proof of Murphy's Laws
when guessing something without knowing it! All explanations how things
work are based on actual flow of electrons, even in P-type semiconductors.
After all, this is electronics, not holonics nor positronics.
Manfred
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http://ludens.cl
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