Electricity doesn't work the way I thought it did

[Wayoftheflower]

Veritasium taking on another topic after killing my brain with "Faster than the wind downwind"

https://youtu.be/bHIhgxav9LY

[Wayoftheflower]

Kes Arevo said:

GroundZero said:

I always thought of electricity as a similar case to "Newton's cradle", even though it was incorrectly taught at school to be more "river" like.

Recently saw that Veritasium video and it does puts another angle on it which is interesting.

Yeah, akin to pushing a rod. You don't have to push one end of the rod much for the end of the other end to move.

If I thought about it much at all (Electrickery was by far my weakest subject) the chain in a pipe would've made the most logicial analogy in my mind. I guessed 2s for the circuit to "complete" and start delivering power.

Some of the extensions and rebuttals to the video are going to be interesting to watching. It seems like Veritasium's assumptions make it far more debateable than FTTWDW.

[Wayoftheflower]

GroundZero said:

This guy (Alphapheonix channel), does the best job so far in explaining the veritasium video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8

The graphics used in the video do a good job of visualising how the electric charge from one wire passes over to the other in order to provide a short lived current through the bulb.

That's a great video thanks for the link, particularly the "cut-wire" test around 18:00. I feel slightly less confuzzled than I did before.
I'm going to enjoy catching up on his other videos too, looks like another great science YT channel.

[Wayoftheflower]

MikeStroud said:

Well here's my stupid question having watched the first video:

If the power is going around the wire in the fields then why does a fuse wire blow? Surely the power is just in the field around it?

I was taught that DC and LF power went through the wire itself but as frequency increased it tended to go through the skin of the wire (skin effect) hence why some good quality high frequency wires were gold coated etc. This video suggest that even DC power goes through the fields and not the wire.

I cannot recommend enough the above linked Alphaphoenix video on the subject. Tiny amounts of power are in the omnidirectional fields. Shoving more electrons down a wire than it can handle is something else, although electrickery is still mostly a mystery to me.