What is the force that makes electrons move in a conductor?
This force is called electromotive force, or EMF. Sometimes it is convenient to think of EMF as electrical pressure. In other words, it is the force that makes electrons move in a certain direction within a conductor. Click to see full answer.
What is the movement of electrons in a circuit called?
The movement of electrons in a circuit is called current. Electrons in a current are repelled from the negative end of the circuit and attracted to the positive end of the circuit.
What causes electrons to move through a wire as current?
Also to know is, what causes electrons to move through a wire as a current? An electric current flows when electrons move through a conductor, such as a metal wire. The moving electrons can collide with the ions in the metal. This makes it more difficult for the current to flow, and causes resistance.
What is the pressure that moves the electrons through a circuit?
Voltage is the pressure that moves the electrons (current) through a circuit. What moves trough wire around the circuit? What is the force that moves electrons? What particle moves when electricity flows through a circuit?
Answer
In a circuit, there is cell or battery. This is the energy source. The battery creates an electric force field which causes electrons to move through the circuit. The current moves from positive terminal to negative terminal of the battery.
New questions in Physics
Identify two objects at your desk, and describe each using at least 5 physical properties of matter that were discussed in this module.
What force does work on electrons in a conductor?
The force doing work on electrons in a conductor is always an electric force F → = q E →. Magnetic forces can do no work since F → = q ( v → × B →) is always perpendicular to the velocity v →.
What is the force that acts between electrically charged particles?
From wikipedia “Electromagnetism is the force that acts between electrically charged particles. This phenomenon includes the electrostatic force acting between charged particles at rest, and the combined effect of electric and magnetic forces acting between charged particles moving relative to each other.”
How does electric current work?
The electrons move (in net, overall) due to the fundamental force known as electromagnetism, specifically the electrostatic attraction or repulsion between charged particles. That is the basis for electric fields and electric potential; those are just ways of characterizing and analyzing this attractive and/or repulsive force between charged particles/objects. In the simple situation you describe in your question, magnetism is not part of it. (Although in your answer to your own question, which was never really a question but a point to make, there is a situation where magnetism generates the current)
How to calculate EMF?
To calculate the EMF, you take a snapshot of the situation, compute the integral ε = ∮ f → ⋅ d r →, where f → = F → / q is the "force per unit charge" on the electron at that instant in time. Don't think of this as a work integral, because to calculate the work, you need information about the actual motion of the electrons and the forces that act on them as they move. You don't use that information to compute the EMF. In practice, for most situations you can think of f → as and electric field E →, which is comprised of two contributions:
How does a battery work?
This is known as feedback. The next electrons coming by are repelled away from this build up allowing them to travel around instead of just directly away from the battery. This is how electrons can travel through a wire even if you bend it 90 degrees like a square. In fact, electrons on the surface of the wire are what force other electrons inside the metal to flow. They begin with an excess of electrons near the negative end of the battery and slowly become a deficiency of electrons on the surface of the wire near the positive end of the battery.
What is magnetic field line?
2) The magnetic field lines are the hypothetical representation of the direction of force on an +ve charge at any point in the space, the tangential direction. It is not the path of the motion of the charges. Its not this field that causes most of the movement of the electrons but the electric field produced all along the conductor.
Do electrons move all the way along a conductor?
So the electrons move all along the conductor when external field is applied.
Do electrons interact with each other?
For example, in simple (but actually pretty effective!) models, you can assume that the electrons don't interact with each other besides colliding sometimes. In reality however, they are constantly interacting with everything in the material, which is why you make these simplifying models.
Do charge carriers accelerate without bound?
You might argue that the charge carriers will accelerate without bound (Newton's second law), but no, each carrier will eventually collide with an impurity or defect and stop (or deflect, or turn back) the carrier, thus limiting the speed. A thermal vibration can do the same.
Do atoms of conductors have valency electrons?
1) The atoms of the conductors have valency electrons that are loosely bound to the nucleus. Also the crystal structure of the metal conductors have the sea of valency electrons which are free from nucleus bonds and are free to move upon external potential. So the electrons move all along the conductor when external field is applied.
