The Biggest Misconception About Electricity

The video in question for reference: [LINK] Interestingly, when I saw that I figured this channel for a goner because he was going to turn to the darkside, but quite contrary to expectations I feel like his channel has actually blossomed since then. His older videos are fine, but often just explaining concepts that you can find a lot of other explanations on, but some of his recent videos have rocked the boat even among physicists and IMHO he was ultimately proved to be correct for them. I particularly point at his videos about how nobody has measured the one-way speed of light ( [LINK] ), which was well-known among people very very deep in the field of relativity but not very well known outside of that (even amongst physicists in other fields, let alone lay people) and the electricity videos he's done in the last year ( [VIDEO] , [LINK] ) which attracted a whole whackload of "debunking" videos, which were themselves wrong (the best "bunking" video, if I may call it that, is probably AlphaPheonix's: [LINK] , since he actually set up the experiment, albeit on a smaller scale). They aren't all of that caliber, but the knot theory video was very good too and not something I've seen a hundred times elsewhere, and the airships video that preceded that one clearly had a high degree of research put into it beyond just the hype.

Only tangentially related, but I highly recommend watching Veritasium's YouTube video on electricity if you're curious as to how Maxwell's fields create the current / amp abstractions in EE [1]. It's a common misconception that electrons or current transfer energy. In reality it's the electric field that exists between the wires that is doing the heavy lifting, the electrons in the wires are just controlling the field. This has always confused me and I was very irritated when I first learned electromagnetics about how rote all the initial learnings are. I wish more work was put earlier into making everything relate back to Maxwell's equations to make it make sense. [1] [VIDEO]

this is an interesting video (to me anyway!!) on the speed of electrons vs fields The Big Misconception About Electricity.. [VIDEO]

I dove deep into this topic after reading your post and discovered something fascinating: electricity doesn't actually flow through wires in the conventional way I was taught. It's more about the electromagnetic field around the wire. This video explains it really well: [VIDEO]

The problem with (or the advantage of) the water flowing analogy, or even more broadly the discrete element model, is that it explains reality good enough to be used in most practical situations. Schematics are ubiquitous, yes they are "fake", but they are also usually "correct enough". Kind of like the incorrect Bohr's model of electrons orbiting the nucleus actually does explain the emission spectra (up to a point). But there is an accessible video that explains electricity pretty well. Veritasium - The Big Misconception About Electricity: [VIDEO] There is one commonly used concept that requires understanding electricity correctly, and not just as a combination of waterhoses and gizmos. It's impedance, and it directly corresponds to the "controversial" experiment that Veritasium is proposing in his video. Impedance breaks the pipe-of-electrons analogy.

There's also the field theory of electricity: [VIDEO] It’s an eye opening alternative explanation to the electrons flowing like a chain theory of this article.

Good intrpduction are Veritasium videos: "How Electricity Actually Works" [LINK] "The Biggest Misconception About Electricity" [VIDEO]

That's not exactly correct. Electrons don't flow through wires - there's a one-way flow of the ambient electrons around the wire from the field created. See here: [VIDEO]