CHARGE AND CURRENT

A QUICK REVIEW OF OLD STUFF Electrons and protons have the same

magnitude (amount) of charge, although the electron is negative and the proton
positive. All electrons are identical to each other, and all protons are likewise
identical to each other.

The charge on a single electron is very small --- too small to be convenient in
electronics. For example, there are typically about 10,000,000,000,000,000
electrons per second flowing in the wires of a small, low-power circuit like a
wristwatch. So, we use a larger unit to measure charge, called the coulomb.

1 coulomb = 6.24x1018 electrons
1 electron = 1.60x10-19 coulombs
AND NOW, SOME NEW STUFF Usually, in electronics work we aren't dealing
with stationary (static) charges, but rather moving charge: electrical current.
We'll use the variable I to stand for current. Current is defined as the rate of
charge movement. Almost always, the moving charges are electrons (NOT protons
or other charged particles).

The unit we use to measure current is the ampere, usually pronounced in

shortened form as "amp".

1 amp = 1 coulomb per second

or, said even more briefly...

1 A = 1 coul/sec
So, saying that 1 amp is flowing through a wire is equivalent to saying that
6.24x1018 electrons are flowing down the wire every second.

EXAMPLE   An iPod Nano, playing audio only, uses about 25 mA of current. (a)
What is that current, in amps? (b) How many electrons is that, per second?

(a) 1 milliamp is one-thousandth of an amp, or in other words, 1 A = 1000 mA.

                         

(b) ratio and proportion

                        
Current can be produced in a variety of ways, but the most common
are batteries and generators.

Batteries use chemical reactions, and produce current that flows in a steady
direction. This is called direct current, or DC.

Generators naturally produce current that constantly switches direction, back and
forth. (Why that is the case will be discussed when we talk about how generators
work.) This is called alternating current, or AC. Because the electricity in your
wall outlets comes from a generator at a power plant, it is AC. In the U.S.,
standard outlet current alternates back-and-forth 60 times per second, or 60 Hertz
(60 Hz). The voltage is 120 volts.

Because so many electrical devices need DC, many gadgets require the use of
a power supply (often called a wall adapter or brick) that plugs into the wall
outlet and converts the AC into DC. They usually also change the voltage.
CONVENTIONAL CURRENT

In electrical circuits it's the electrons that are moving, not positive charges?

For example, in a battery-powered circuit, electrons flow away from the negative
terminal of the battery, towards the positive terminal.

However, during most of the 1800s no one knew that. During that century people
invented the battery (Alessandro Volta in 1800), the generator (Michael Faraday,
in the 1830's), the electric motor (by Anyos Jedlik in 1827), the lightbulb (by James
Lindsay in 1835, and made practical in the 1880's by Thomas Edison), and cities
were being wired for electricity; all this, before the electron itself was discovered,
which was in 1899. In 1879, E.A. Hall had shown that the moving charges in
circuits were negative, because of the effect of a magnetic field on the current,
now called the Hall Effect.

However, during all this time physicists and engineers had made the assumption
that what was moving in the wires was positive charge. That tradition, or
convention, was firmly established by the time it was discovered to be otherwise,
and since it doesn't matter (after all, you can't see the moving charges) to this day
we still speak of the charges as positive, moving away from the positive end of the
battery towards the negative end. This is called conventional current.