Electricity Generation

I have recently been studying electrical engineering and electronics. The electricity brought into our home is generated basically by spinning some coils in a magnetic field. Electricity is flow of electrons. Where do the electrons come from? If they came from the magnets, wouldn't the magnets lose mass? If they came from the coils, wouldn't the coils lose mass? Where do all those billions and billions of electrons come from?

the electricity comes from the induction in the coils.
heres a good simple link to explain it ..

Induction

electricity is flowing of electrons. Yes I agree electricity comes from the induction of a moving magnetic field. But where do those electrons come from?

Isn't there some law where energy/matter cannot be created or destroyed?

Ok I think I can tune you in mate as I have 20+ years of electrical experience in the trade...The electrons are basically forced out of one of the outer valence shells of the copper/aluminium ( common conductors ) and jump into the adjacent vacated orbit ( electrons spin around a necleus made of protons and nuetrons ).

So in effect the electrons dont appear out of thin air they are simply forced out of their current orbit by a magnetic field that crosses a conductor that is electrically conductive into an adjacent orbit.

Any other electrical questions I can give you the mainstream spin I got taught with 7+ years of technical training, I can also give tell you what they don't know about electricity.

that makes sense...

when an electron moves through the filament of a light bulb, the bulb thus emits
electromagnetic waves in the visible and infrared spectrum.

what happens to the electron that went through the filament? Did it leave the filament as a "wave form"? Did the act of it moving through the filament cause the molecules in the filament to radiate there own particles in a wave-form?
When electricity flows through the element of stove, lots of infrared is radiated. Where does that radiation come from? Is the electron matter or energy? Particle or wave?

I am incredibly interested... Not just yet though, I am still struggling with the fundamental concepts. I am trying to teach my self through reading e-books.
Don't believe in colleges, nor do I have the finances.

The Tungsten element can endure alot of current before it burns out so in effect the tungsten electrons are heated ( By bumping into each other at high speed ) to an extreme value and visible light is radiated out in the form of waves. Heated and electrically imparted energy bleeds off some of this energy and when elevated to a high enough value this energy is seen by the naked eye in the form of visible light.

Hope that helped.

True, as long as it is not exposed to oxygen. I have heated steel wool then dropped it into a container of oxygen and it burned like paper.

Lol. I loved that experiment for 11 Chem. Me and my friends had to buy a whole bunch of steel wool cuz one day we just decided to burn up the entire supply in the classroom! There was a sub in at the time and we just BSed him into thinking we were supposed to do it for an experiment or something. Ah good times. (We were a bit messed up as well )

...far be it from me to argue with a seasoned professoinal, but,

i believe in the original question posted by Viszet Oki, he is asking about AC voltage. your answer, mazzroth, applies only to DC, yes? your description, quoted above, sounds like a battery.

DC voltage is a constant energy force. it can be likened to a heat source or waterfall, or chemical transfer of electrons from a positive to negative pole inside of a battery. DC is power.

Alternating current is different. it uses a constant energy source, such as a waterfall, to turn a magnet inside of a generator. there is no transfer of electrons to or from the wire coil or magnet within the generator. the electrons in the wire coil are modulated back and forth very quickly (at 60 Hz, american), according to the spinning field created by the spinning magnet. this is called induction.

when this energy reaches your home, it is re-translated into a constant force by the filament in the lightbulb: light and heat. electronic devices, such as computers and televisions, have internal "power supplies" which convert the AC to DC before it hits the electronic components.

to sum up: only DC is usable. AC is merely a method of getting the original power source (the waterfall) to the outlet in the wall of your house. it enables the energy of a rushing waterfall to be magically translated to a burning lightbulb.


dkp

to answer your first question, read my above post, and understand that the electron on the wire never actually traverses the filament of the lightbulb. the design of a lightbulb filament is such that it's reaction to the AC current is heat.

simple experiment: take a string, hold it between two fingers, and pull it through to the end without changin direction. this is DC. now, take the string and pull it beween your fingers *back and forth* very quickly. this is AC. both produce heat. DC can also be transmitted over a wire, however, it is far more dangerous than AC. a power cable, downed by a lighning strike, will cause a fire if it is carrying DC. it will not cause a fire if it is carrying AC.


dkp

you are very sneaky, viszet. starting us out on energy induction and turning it around to the quantum nature of the electron!

very, very sneaky.

there are lots of threads with good information about quantum physics...way more than i want to go into here. however, it sounds like you are starting from square one, so i will fill you in a little bit.

corollary: an electron can be transmitted from an electron gun, one single electron at a time. things which travel in "discreet packets" exhibit properties of a particle.

corollary: as each electron hits the photo-receptor, one at a time, it produces the same interference patterns (shadows and reflections) as though it were a beam of light. things that behave in this way exhibit wave properties.

problem: how does a single particle "know" where to land in order to produce a wave-like interference pattern?

solution: quantum physics


dkp

dkp



AC and DC are merely alternating or direct, and mean exactly what you said. The fact that electrons oscillate in AC back and forth doesn't depart from the principle of electrons being forced into another valency. Thank you for adding that useful information but as I remember the question above didn't revolve around which is the most useful AC or DC.

The answer "still" is that the electrons are in orbit around a (Proton/Neutron) molecule of the copper/aluminium conductor and are pushed into another valency wether it be AC or DC.


[edit on 2-6-2007 by mazzroth]

It's a lot of fun even if you aren't messed up. Not saying that you were messed up in class...that would just be wrong. You learn a lot more if you are having fun!!!

The simple answer to your question is that they come from atoms in the wire in which the current is generated. The electrons in the wire are called the Electron Sea.

Electrons flow from negative back to positive. They dont just flow out along the negative wire , they also flow into along the positive wire. The larger the current in a given wire diameter / material the faster the electrons are flowing. The electrons themselves aren't generating energy it is the flow of those electrons that is energy.

Electrons will flow from the positive wire into the space where the first electrons started the movement down the negative wire. This is called electron drift. So therefor the wire will not loose mass.




That is defiantly not the case. AC is in fact very usable and most household motors run on AC electricity. The AC motor was invented by Nicola Tesla during a time when AC was thought to be unusable. Most all household lights also use AC.




That is also incorrect if the current voltage and waveform are comparable then both DC and AC are just as dangerous as the other . Yes AC can cause a fire via a downed power line.

AC is used in power lines because Nicola Tesla pioneered and set the standard for the use of transformers to increase the voltage and decrease the current of AC allowing for electricity to travel along lengthy power lines with less resistance. DC electricity can also be transformed to higher or lower voltages via transformers if the DC has a waveform.



Viszet Oki my personal advise for you on your quest for knowledge is not to try and soak up all of your information from various websites on the net because there is just to much false information out there.

If your really wish to learn about electricity I recommend the US navy NEETS (Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series) training modules. They can take you anywhere from the design and theory generator and motor basics to fiber optics , radar and satellite communications basics in a very well planed step by step process.

If your dont want to go through them all and only wish to learn about the basics of electricity generation then go with NEETS module 1 , 2 and 5
Introduction to Matter, Energy and Direct Current
Introduction to Alternating Current and Transformers
Introduction to generators and motors...

Im not sure if you can order the old booklets like I have however you can order them all on one CD for the price you will pay for one book on electricity / electronics. If you are like me and read better on paper than on a monitor then you could always print them out.

Scratch that I found them here where you can view them or print them out for free!
www.phy.davidson.edu...


[edit on 2-6-2007 by Heckman]

Yes but it was just that much more "magical" when "under the influence of @#&!"

[edit on 2-6-2007 by sardion2000]

Heckman



Sorry mate but you are so far off the mark it aint funny, an electron has a negative charge and the hole it leaves ( valance hole ) when it jumps to another ( proton/nuetron) moecule is positively charged. Electrons always travel at the speed of light, the "larger the current" as you so eloquently put does not mean they travel faster but in larger quantities. The last bit is partly right but the electrons do generate energy in the form of heat and electromagnetic waves.

Well I don't know much about the subject, so before I say something, I'm on this thread to learn.

The most recent scientific article on electricity that I've read still says that we do not exactly know what electricity is. Electrons yes, flow yes.. but details.. it's still

As for waveform/particle. according to the tidbits of quantum mechanics I think I know electrons behave like waveforms unobserved and like particles when observed.

No matter is being destroyed or anything electricity can only flow in a closed circuit.
What a dynamo does, is cause atoms to release an electron, leaving positively charged atoms. The loose electron moves to the next atom in the circuit which now has one too much. Repelling 1 electron to compensate to the next atom which repeats this, in the end the electron will come full circle and return to the atom it came from so in the end all atoms are neutral again. Of course it does not have to be a specific electron, the end result that matters is that everything is in order again and every atom/molecule has the correct number of electrons again. Attraction and forcefull repelling on a molecular scale using electrons -> electricity.. (my logic). The analogy of a water pump in a closed circuit is quite good.

[edit: spelling]

[edit on 3/6/2007 by David2012]

I dont see how i am off mark??? I never mentioned anything about electrons being positively charged?? I was describing the flow of electrons as in the path they take along electrical wires as a whole. The positive and negative that I was referring to is the "labeling" of the wires as they are attached to a generator / battery.




Reading my post over I can see that I should have been more clear.. I was refering to the flow of electrons through a wire rather than single electron speed... that being "electron drift" and it is much much slower than the speed of light depending on the current and the material that it is flowing through. And yes electron drift speed is higher with a larger current given the same material!!!

Since your wishing to nit pick Ill also say that single electrons do not move at the speed of light. They move near the speed of light.




Again I should have been more clear in my statement because after all , matter is energy.

I should have said:
Electrons must flow in order to make electric current. Even as the electrons are already present if they (the electrons) are not flowing then there is no electric current.




Thank you David , you answered the question and explained the flow in simple terms as I was trying to do in my previous post. However your explanation is better.


[edit on 3-6-2007 by Heckman]

Fossil fuels and all that does nothing other than create dipole's from which a small fraction of the energy flows into the conductors.



They are stable elementary particles that are part of atoms.... Asking where electrons come from is much like asking where atoms comes from .



Well they don't which is why magnets do not lose mass but may eventually lose their ability to gate energy.



What you should do is ask where the energy comes from that forces those electrons down the conductors...

Stellar