Direction of Current?

[JeffL1]

I can't get my head around this?  Current travels from Positive to Negative, but electrons travel from Negative to Positive.  I thought current was the flow of electrons.  What does this all mean? 

 

[coppercone2]

use a compass and right hand rule to find direction of current flow (ignore schematic)

[langwadt]

they guy that first defined the direction of current flow screwed up and we are stuck with, but it doesn't really matter it is just the way it is

[David Hess]

they guy that first defined the direction of current flow screwed up and we are stuck with, but it doesn't really matter it is just the way it is

Wasn't the guy Benjamin Franklin?

[PGPG]

I thought current was the flow of electrons.  What does this all mean? 

People defined current flow direction when they didn't know that really traveling objects (electrons) are negative.

[tszaboo]

It is called technical current or conventional current. For most electronics, the electron current is irrelevant, since it's only relevant for cathode ray tubes or talking about how a transistor works. So just forget about the electron current.

[wasedadoc]

At the macroscopic level, negative charges moving in one direction look pretty much thr same as positive charges moving in the opposite direction.

[coppercone2]

there might be a hole in your theory

[djsb]

Search for Richard Feynman electricity.

[Xena E]

Current doesn't travel, or flow, anywhere: it's just a quantification of energy flow at a point in a circuit.

[TimFox]

Electromagnetism was developed in the mid-19th century, culminating in work of Maxwell and Heaviside (q.v.), starting from previous work by Faraday and others.
Current is a scalar, with a positive or negative sign.
It is defined in physics as an integral over an area of the scalar product of the current density vector and the area vector normal to the area.
This was before the electron was discovered in 1897, and shown to have a negative charge using the existing definition of voltage and current polarity.
As can be found in elementary textbooks, the flow of electrons is one form of current, but the flow of positive ions is also an electrical current.
The easiest forms to consider are electrons through a vacuum tube, or ions in a particle accelerator vacuum:  current through solids (copper and semiconductors) is a more complicated process (solid-state physics).
I think of current in a wire as a slight tendency of a gazillion electrons to move to the right, making a current flowing to the left, as a result of a voltage gradient along the wire.

[Marco]

current through solids (copper and semiconductors) is a more complicated process (solid-state physics).

That turns it on its head. Currents through solids can sometimes be simplified by not thinking in terms of moving electrons.

[CatalinaWOW]

It is all an agreement between people discussing the subject, and sometimes one way works better than the other.  There is nothing absolutely fundamental about either definition so don't get to worked up about it.  The only really important thing is to stay consistent within any single analysis.  And then be careful when copying or transferring results from one  analysis to another. 

[TimFox]

Current and charge are concepts that are more general than are individual types of charge carriers (e.g., electrons and ions).
The motion of electrons in a cathode-ray vacuum tube is a very easy type of current to understand:  solid-state physics is more complex.
Changing the definition of the polarity of charge to make electrons positive would require re-labeling every voltmeter in the world, to no good purpose.

[SteveThackery]

The "direction" of current was defined as flowing from positive to negative at a time before electrons were discovered. When they were discovered, it was found that they flow from negative to positive. Rather than redefine the "direction" of current - which would have had numerous knock-on effects - they just shrugged their shoulders and said "Oh, well, let's call it "conventional" current that flows from positive to negative."

It almost never matters unless you are designing a new semiconductor, or a device to perform electrolysis, which way the electrons flow. You can safely use conventional current in your electronic circuit designs and calculations.

[Marco]

Current and charge are concepts that are more general

Holes are abstraction, not generalization.

You can fire an electron through a vacuum, you can't a hole ... it generally doesn't exist.

[Zero999]

The "direction" of current was defined as flowing from positive to negative at a time before electrons were discovered.

Thought experiment: would electronics be any different today, if the direction was correctly in the first place? Would we be using negative voltages for single supply circuits?

[m k]

Energy flows, it has power and it can do work.

When energy hits antenna it create disturbances, it force electrons to move away from their comfort zone.
That creates a chain effect and what?

Electron that was in old place is now in new place, generally.
If old place is without a new electron there is a positive imbalance, generally.
New place then has a negative imbalance, generally.

It's much easier to talk without a constant minus sign.

[IanB]

Seems like this was a drive-by thread-bombing, and everyone took the bait?

[m k]

Used energy is still pretty low.

[Neilm]

Obligatory XKCD
https://xkcd.com/567/

[JeffL1]

"drive-by thread-bombing" is a new term for me.  I wasn't doing that.  Thinking in terms of water current, I can't understand how water can move in one direction, but the current flows in the opposite direction.  Just doesn't make sense.

[PGPG]

Thought experiment: would electronics be any different today, if the direction was correctly in the first place? Would we be using negative voltages for single supply circuits?

But it was.
When I started to learn electronic (when I was 10) the only transistors I could have were germanium pnp. The first transistor radio receiver I was building had + as GND and -9V as single supply. All circuits those time were using negative single supply. First silicon npn I had in my hands was BF520 bought by my friend's mom to darkroom clock I was building for him and couldn't get enough time stability using germanium pnp transistors. This transistor was very expensive. Real value for us was like $100 now. I had to learn reverse electronic when moving from germanium pnp to silicon npn.

[thephil]

As others pointed out, current was defined well before we knew about electrons so things seem to be backwards.

But that's OK – electrons are not the only way to carry charge around. they just happen to be the thing that flows through the wires we like to use. Current is just "something carrying charge is moving in some direction." – If something is positively charged things are aligned. If something is negatively charged, like electrons,  things seem to be backwards. Just think of technical current as "positive charge moving in that direction" and then, obviously, negative things moving in the opposite direction amount to the same thing.

[artag]

It's not so much that current was defined as wrong, but positive and negative. The direction and charge of a current-carrying electron are consistent, but if + and - had been give as names to the opposite battery terminals it would all have made sense, with electrons positively-charged and carrying current from + to -