Veritasium - 2021-11-19
The misconception is that electrons carry potential energy around a complete conducting loop, transferring their energy to the load. This video was sponsored by Caséta by Lutron. Learn more at https://Lutron.com/veritasium Further analysis of the large circuit is available here: https://ve42.co/bigcircuit Special thanks to Dr Geraint Lewis for bringing up this question in the first place and discussing it with us. Check out his and Dr Chris Ferrie’s new book here: https://ve42.co/Universe2021 Special thanks to Dr Robert Olsen for his expertise. He quite literally wrote the book on transmission lines, which you can find here: https://ve42.co/Olsen2018 Special thanks to Dr Richard Abbott for running a real-life experiment to test the model. Huge thanks to all of the experts we talked to for this video -- Dr Karl Berggren, Dr Bruce Hunt, Dr Paul Stanley, Dr Joe Steinmeyer, Ian Sefton, and Dr David G Vallancourt. ▀▀▀ References: A great video about the Poynting vector by the Science Asylum: https://youtu.be/C7tQJ42nGno Sefton, I. M. (2002). Understanding electricity and circuits: What the text books don’t tell you. In Science Teachers’ Workshop. -- https://ve42.co/Sefton Feynman, R. P., Leighton, R. B., & Sands, M. (1965). The feynman lectures on physics; vol. Ii, chapter 27. American Journal of Physics, 33(9), 750-752. -- https://ve42.co/Feynman27 Hunt, B. J. (2005). The Maxwellians. Cornell University Press. Müller, R. (2012). A semiquantitative treatment of surface charges in DC circuits. American Journal of Physics, 80(9), 782-788. -- https://ve42.co/Muller2012 Galili, I., & Goihbarg, E. (2005). Energy transfer in electrical circuits: A qualitative account. American journal of physics, 73(2), 141-144. -- https://ve42.co/Galili2004 Deno, D. W. (1976). Transmission line fields. IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and Systems, 95(5), 1600-1611. -- https://ve42.co/Deno76 ▀▀▀ Special thanks to Patreon supporters: Luis Felipe, Anton Ragin, Paul Peijzel, S S, Benedikt Heinen, Diffbot, Micah Mangione, Juan Benet, Ruslan Khroma, Richard Sundvall, Lee Redden, Sam Lutfi, MJP, Gnare, Nick DiCandilo, Dave Kircher, Edward Larsen, Burt Humburg, Blake Byers, Dumky, Mike Tung, Evgeny Skvortsov, Meekay, Ismail Öncü Usta, Crated Comments, Anna, Mac Malkawi, Michael Schneider, Oleksii Leonov, Jim Osmun, Tyson McDowell, Ludovic Robillard, Jim buckmaster, fanime96, Ruslan Khroma, Robert Blum, Vincent, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Alfred Wallace, Arjun Chakroborty, Joar Wandborg, Clayton Greenwell, Michael Krugman, Cy 'kkm' K'Nelson,Ron Neal Written by Derek Muller and Petr Lebedev Animation by Mike Radjabov and Ivy Tello Filmed by Derek Muller and Emily Zhang Footage of the sun by Raquel Nuno Edited by Derek Muller Additional video supplied by Getty Images Music from Epidemic Sound Produced by Derek Muller, Petr Lebedev and Emily Zhang
As a ham radio operator, I was taught that RF (radio frequency) travels along the outer skin of the wire. The higher the frequency, the more pronounced the effect. Rf in non-visible (low frequency) light so that works for me. So the surface aria of the wire making up the antenna feedline, or wire antenna makes a difference. Not only the surface aria of the wire, but surface coating of the wire. Electroplate a copper wire with gold, and conductivity and efficiency dramatically improve.
In practical applications, however, there is a point of deminishing returns with increasing or coating surface arias in efficiency, weight, strength and cost.
FUN STUFF!!!
Awesome video!! Poynting vectors where referenced often by Tom Bearden. John Bedini devices collected this energy from around the wires using sharp gradient impulses of energy, while shutting off the potential source before current could flow and kill the source di-pole. He was able to induce energy into the wire and collect the Poynting vector energy without depleting the source supply. This is an great video that might help pave the way to understand electricity better. And appreciate that there is more going on around the wires than through the wires. And this energy can be engineered to our benefit.
Hi @Veritasium, I enjoyed the video with the concept of energy flux and the use of electron as "static" media guiding the electromagnetic waves. But how do you explain arcing with the energy flux as arcing is a flux of electron ionizing the ambient air? Or how do you explain electronic components such as transistors triggered by electron flux?
Mind=Blown
I have no idea who showed me this or how I discovered it, but if you go underneath the huge transmission lines that you will find in the desert areas surrounding Phoenix, and hold a fluorescent tube style bulb in the air at night, it glows. Actually a lot brighter than you would expect. I always kinda figured this was due to the huge amounts of power running through the lines somehow radiating through the insulation (You actually can hear the lines buzzing and crackling, pretty sketchy actually) but this explanation makes way more sense now.
Subscribed!!!
Thing is, those high-voltage wires are actually not insulated at all (or at least, very little). The reason why birds don't get fried all the time is that there is no path to ground if you only touch the wire, nothing else.
After watching this video I can confidently say I understand less about how electricity works than I did before.
@Joshua Roebuck isn't that because lightning is the result of the strength of the negative charge in the clouds reaching sufficient strength to "brute force" it's way through the air to the ground (or at least to the tree), overcoming the resistance in the air?
@Joshua Roebuck what do you define as "work?" you aren't making sense...
@Awkwurd Talke - Games and Gamery I don't need to define "work" since it's in any secondary school text book. I wont explain it to you because this topic requires you understand that first before coming here.
@Awkwurd Talke - Games and Gamery There is a followup video Veratisium made to further clarify this topic so I will not be explaining it here.
@Awkwurd Talke - Games and Gamery II will not be explaining this over. Whatever you think the reason for electricity passing through the air is, it doesnt change the fact that energy passed without wires dude.
Great video! Not only informationwise but also neat production. Thanks a lot!
It is definitely an eye opener to me. Being an EE all my life i will look into this more.
Thank you! I asked about this at tech college and got told to leave the class if I was going to ask such stupid questions ;-)
That’s terrible, no question is stupid when you are trying to learn. Sounds like you had a crap teacher.
That is telling about most of college life - totally overrated - just stick to the internet and YouTube especially - seriously!
Well, I'm having trouble "visualizing" I guess. I was doing fine right up until I thought about diodes/FET's , well, any semiconductor that ignores magnetic anything. "Diodes" I guess, still constitute a conductor when fwd biased, but I was also taught electrons move quite a bit "microscopically speaking" in semi-conductors. (esp. a reversed biased junction) I see what's been offered in the video, and it definitely is a proof, but no or "extremely little" electron movement?
Of course I find this video now… around 6 months ago I got into a small debate with my electrical engineering professor over a topic very similar to this. Everyone in the class seemed to be on the professors side which I guess makes sense but then the following week our professor walks into class and tells me he thought about what I was asking and had looked into it.
He walked up to the board and showed some of the similar stuff you did in this video and proclaimed I had actually been correct and my original question that countered his previous discussion he admitted to the class he was in fact wrong. This was the first time in my life I had such a crystallized idea of what someone that was truly intelligent acted like. He wasn’t upset, frustrated or hurt that his initial statement was wrong because he didn’t care about being right, he cared about the truth.
I know it sounds corny to say seeing someone look for confirmation instead of affirmation changed my outlook on life but it really did. Never before had I seen some so openly question their very own view and search for the truth rather than search for what backs up their view or idea. Great video, as always
So why am I only being shocked if I touch the wire????
I had kind of the same experience. That was some math equations.
Many years later I found out that people's brains has different preferred methods of learning. Mine prefers learning using visual / vision and sound/audio - meaning only-text books will result in really bad exam results - which is and always had been true. Include pictures drawing and graphs - and an exam result becomes more like everyone else.
Regarding equations, I imagine boxes being replaced, disappear, or moved. I can manage 3 to 4 of those math operations simultaneously.
This is a commercial video designed to sells switches. It demonstrates the wrong model and you should never take it as granted : Imagine a circuit that is connected by a conductive wire the size of the universe and two lamps. One lamp is connected to the battery positive terminal by a wire of 1 cm long, second lamp is connected to the first lamp by a wire of the length of the universe but physically the distance between the first and the second lamp is only 1 cm - they're together. Now we compete the circuit with "commercial power battery shown on this video" and see that both lamps light up at almost the same moment. Despite the fact that there is an infinite loop going through he universe connecting the first and the second lamps. Which further means that no matter how the lamps are connected in one circuit the time of energy flow in each lamp only depends on the distance from the power source. If we imagine a string of bulbs connected in the circuit the length of the Universe and each bulb has a random location in space then if this system is powered up, according to this meta-physical video, it would look like a glow - ripple - starting from the place where the battery is located without any regard to the order in which lamps are physically connected between each other in the circuit by a wire. Which apparently will violate Einstein energy conservation equation. Complete nonsense. You can toss it into the basket and go buying the nice switches shown in this video. You're buying a fairy tale. You can do it yourself. Just put in something they can never proof. Like a loop through the universe. Or that time would bend if a light reached 100 years, something shocking.
I expect another fairy tale, like measuring the speed of light to sell more LEDs. You know it's a very sensitive subject. Although we tell everywhere about the speed of light - this speed is purely mathematical - a assumption with no real experiment ever proving it. We can all come with something similar to own the minds of the third grade quitters to buying our LEDs.
Refreshing.
If you don’t think that electricity travels through wires then just cut the wire and see what happens. Or use a shielded coax cable and try to make the same assertion.
Okay, I'll trust you, you are far more educated than I on the subject, but I want more answers? Like how does a diode actually work, if the energy is flowing both ways? Is the energy flow dependant on electron flow, even though most of the "information" is in the energy? I have so many questions.
The answer is (E) 2/c seconds. The light goes on in 1/c seconds. You SEE the light after ANOTHER 1/c seconds. The total time in your reference frame is 2/c seconds. The rules of the game are (1) YOU close the switch and (2) YOU know the bulb lights up when YOU see it,
I have a competing explanation for the 1/c answer. C is the speed of causality in this mental simulation we call life. Since the bulb is 1 meter away from the power source, it takes 1/c seconds to update that part of the model with the information that it should be turned on.
The fundamental law of physics: electricity disappear if you stop paying bills.
@Gigachad vi
@Greg Scott and who pays for the solar panels?
Been there. Luckily it was winter . I put the food in the trunk of my car. 😁😁😁
a 25ft extension cord and my neighbor's outdoor plug fixed that
Newton would disagree.
There's something I still can't explain. Energy is carried through the electromagnetic field wich is quite logical afterwards but here's my problem : how do you explain that an other device placed in that field doesn't use that energy too. Said differently, if I place a light bulb (not connected to anything) just next to an other one while it's working, why wouldn'it turn on too ?
The question may seem stupid but I can't give it a clear answer by myself, if someone could enlighten me :)
My guess is the other device would use energy but not a lot. The magnetic and electric fields get smaller the further away from the wires you get. So the Pointing vector at the device will also be small.
So I think my prior guess might be true in an alternating current situation, but not in a dc situation.
If a device that doesn't touch the wires is introduced into this situation then we can model it as an ordinary conductor. So it will have no electrical field inside of it, thus meaning there can be no pointing vectors inside of it. Also introducing the conductor will bend the electric field in such a way that it's perpendicular to the surface of the conductor. Using the right hand rule we can see that this results in the pointing vectors bending to be parallel to the conductor's surface. So the energy will flow around it instead of into it.
Yeah, of course. This is no great revelation to me. I got my education in electromagnetics, including Maxwell, et al, in the 1960s. Also got a solid grounding in atomic physics. Would it come as any surprise that the wavelengths transmitted through glass fiber aren’t actually visible ‘light’ but instead are in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum? Or that a fiber AMPLIFIER has been around since the mid-90s — a literal “straight ‘wire’ with gain”? How was that done? By “pumping” the fiber with lasers, raising electrons into higher energy shells or orbits such that the incoming optical signal results in the release of additional photons — more photons out than entered, thus measurable gain…
There’s also a fascinating video clip from the 1980s that helped to understand a process known as DC electromigration. It was recorded through a scanning electron microscope. It served to explain how the interconnections sputtered onto the surfaces of microchips sometimes failed open…
@Mr Wednesday’s Sober RC well… YOU read it. That qualifies you as a nobody. And we’re not pals.
@Mike Steffes lol, I read the first 2 sentences and saw such pompousness I had to intervene. “This is no great revelation to me” 🤣 🤣 what and absolute nerd turd!
@Mr Wednesday’s Sober RC lmao, the translation of your gibberish: “I didn’t need no edjucayshun”
Why is it my fault you’re too effing ignorant to comprehend my post?
@Mike Steffes man you just don’t get it 🤦♂️ you are just one of those arrogant old farts that already knew it and had make sure we all know it! Lol, guys that have to kick knowledge like that have no self confidence, no self awareness, no real genitalia to speak of… nobody cares that you already knew what he was talking about ya bird. Such a douche
@Mike Steffes you’re not gonna win a battle of wits with me fool. I’m way WAY sharper than you and will just wipe the floor with you, so just cut your losses and stop replying
This is an amazing insight. Thanks!
Asking questions about stuff like this used get me in trouble lol. I was so confused by the water in a pipe analogy once I thought about it :P
EE here; I think most of this info is technically correct, but potentially misleading in some areas.
For one, while it's true that energy is transferred in the space around a conductor, as opposed to through the conductor, the vast majority of that transfer is taking place extremely close to the conductor (we're talking millimeters, typically), due to both the magnetic and electric field strengths decreasing exponentially with distance from the conductor. So in reality, the energy being transferred actually decreases superexponentially with distance from the conductor. Now, in power lines, the ground is still a concern because it's a very long conductor, carrying very high voltage, at very high currents; it's a somewhat extreme case. Yet, even though the cable is miles long, we only need to separate it from the ground by tens of meters to significantly reduce losses over that long distance. Furthermore, the ground is only a problem because power lines are AC. If they were DC, you could lay the cable right on the ground, and you wouldn't get any significant energy loss.
Edit: see below, the dropoff is not actually superexponential, but the general idea that energy transfer is greater closer to the conductor is still accurate.
For two, the analogy of electron flow being like water through a tube is actually still accurate in the case of the undersea transmission line. The metal rings around the cable cause a change in electrical impedance for that section of the cable. In the case of water in a tube, this would be analogous to having an air bubble trapped in your tube. As a pressure wave travels through the water, it will suddenly hit this air pocket, which is far more compressible than the water (i.e. has a different impedance), which will cause the waveform to distort in precisely the same manner as the electric wave does in the cable. Some energy will pass through the bubble, creating your distorted (attenuated) waveform, and the rest of the energy will actually become a wave reflected back in the other direction. This is precisely what's causing the distortions in the undersea transmission line. There's a bunch of reflected waves bounding back and forth between all the iron rings that stretch and distort the original signal. (for the real electrical nerds, check out "time domain reflectometry", which uses this principle to precisely detect where a fault exists on a power line)
Third; yes, energy transfer from the switch to the bulb will occur in 1/c time (by the way, I think you could clarify this by representing it as d/c time, where d is distance from the switch to the bulb. You never really state where the 1 comes from in that equation (at first I thought you were implying it was a constant value, unrelated to this distance)). And yes, you do clarify that it will only be a fraction of the steady state energy. But I think you should stress that this would be an extremely small portion of that steady state energy. The initial energy that the bulb receives will only be due to the capacitive and magnetic coupling between the two long portions of the conductor. And in the case of wire separated by 1 meter, both the capacitive and magnetic coupling would be practically zero. This again is due in part to the exponentially decaying electrical and magnetic field strengths with distance from the conductor, as well as the poor electric and magnetic permiativity of the dielectric (air) between the conductors.
Fourth; addressing your question about "why is energy transferred during one half cycle, but not returned back to the plant in the other half of the cycle", I think your physical demonstration actually explains that perfectly. No matter which end of the chain you pull, there's something down the line offering resistance to the motion of the chain. Heck, you even get friction between the chain and the tube, which is like resistance in electrical conductors. However, if you attached a sort of clock spring to your wheel (such that the spring always worked to return the wheel to its at-rest position), you would indeed see some energy returned to the power plant (you) on the second half of the cycle. This is analogous to powering a capacitive load with AC.
@Ujjwal If the electric field is there then it is possible of powering devices. In your scenario what happens when the switch is turned off? Would it take two seconds for the light to turn off? Because that seems to cause some problems. That would imply the battery is powering a light bulb for 2 seconds after the circuit it is connected to is disconnected. Now imagine the battery isn't disconnected by a switch but instead runs out of power. Does it still light the bulb for two seconds after the battery dies due to the field still existing for 2 seconds until the current has time to de-propogate?.
The answer is of course that it takes the same time to turn the bulb off as it did to turn it on and it would also behave the same if the battery died, and yet if the battery dies the field directly between the battery and the bulb would have to collapse much quicker since the power is just gone.
""Third; yes, energy transfer from the switch to the bulb will occur in 1/c time ----
---- And yes, you do clarify that it will only be a fraction of the steady state energy.""
And this energy runs faster than light! With the clumsy excuse that it is the only small part of that energy that is in a steady state.
@Josh Harrison I think so too
@Ser iously yeah! What would light the bulb anyway, if not the flow of electrons passing through the little string?
@Veritasium In a book written by Professor Phil Callahan - Paramagnetism the Secret Force of Nature, he mentions Tesla having learned of wireless power transmission from a dentist named Loomis. In my opinion, the wireless transmission they both used negates the electron theory.
What happens when you apply this theory to CERN?
The way that I see it, everything is made of energy and has its own gravity. To conclude a proper experiment on this theory, you would have to be in a complete void to properly conclude this experiment. And take into account all the materials used to perform the experiment within itself. Thus, depending on the exact thickness and density of your wires would have an impact on your outcome. But where exactly is there a complete void to go through with such an experiment. Even if you were at the exact center between the Milky Way and Snickers Galaxy, there would still be interference at play.
The way that I see it, there seems to be some kind of paradox within the whole operation. In other words, you would have to perform the experiment with nothing around it. Nothing at all. For Infinity amount of space. And you could have to conduct the experiment without there being any equipment. Because the equipment itself becomes its own variable.
I hope I said that right 🤷
Wait.. so how would this apply to a thunderstorm. How would you link this concept to that of the earth enormous electromagnetic field and lightning? Would shifting plates or churning molten metals and minerals be a generating source?
Can you explain about lightning strike using Energy transfer like your explanation in this video? 🙏
So I still don’t understand. If I can ask does that mean that if you put a theoretically perfect insulator between the battery and the light bulb and the two are only connected by the conductor then the bulb won’t light up because the magnetic fields won’t be able to flow through the air to the bulb??
I'm an electrician from the UK.
This theory can be proven by holding a florescent tube near a power line. It will glow. My family didn't believe me so I showed them. So glad you explained this in a way they understands fully. Thankyou. Very clever.
@Shiraishi Chan It's a matter of voltage vs. current. A florescent tube reacts to high voltage, needing very little current to light up. A large coil of wire near the power line could produce enough current to kill you.
@Shiraishi Chan Noob here too so thx!! From reading and personal, intuitive experience, we might just get"Influenced" by the field. For example, some folks, like me, feel nauseous in electric cars. Like I am feeling some interaction, ill-at-ease feeling in my body. Folks researching EMF noticed that cats tend to gravitate near those noxious fields. There is a branch of science ( Called pseudo-science by skeptics) that looks at the bio-electrical fields of humans now that we can measure the bio-field of cells and the chemical reactions related to thoughts/feelings/stress. Seems that each organ has its own signature, and the heart has one of the strongest fields. ( 1rst impressions anyone?) Homeostasis can then be perceived as a harmonious interaction between all those fields, pulsating in some sort of rhythmic symphonic coherence your mindful breath being the conductor.. Cancer cells are total chaos, with no rhythm at all, and disrupt the wholistic coherence. I think that is why the Wim hof method works so well, it boosts and restores the body's own bio-electrical field.
@SparkyPete93G It's connected to "resonant frequency and impedance". We are very poor conductors because of our skin properties. Wet us and we get pretty good. We got a demonstration in high school fifty years ago, with the use of a Tesla coil, high voltage makes it far easier to see.
@Darren Jefferies please tell me you stopped murdering foxes
... Windfarms are weapons of Mass Destruction WMD causing Weather Warfare putting Electricity into the Atmosphere and Canada and USA are Corporation of ROME and government means Mind CONTROL btw so Stop Voting and ....
My grandad was a practical joker when one day at the auctions he bought a wooden box of his knowledge of knowing what it was called me and my siblings because my grandma looked after us during school holidays when my parents were working. He gave me a bar to hold attached to a wire and told me to hold hands with my brothers hands linking us together to give grandma a bar to hold he turned the handle on the box to nothing happened to then asked grandma to hold my hand to make a circle of my siblings holding hands and started to wind the handle to myself and grandma got a shocking experience. He laughed and my grandma really buggered himself laughing at us because we were gullible. Until we created a circle and circuit to no effect from the winding mechanism of it was a party piece of fun for him. I remember when he gave my aunt a rod to hold and wound up the box and she kept saying what does it do, so he stopped winding and gave her the other rod in her other hand and started playing with the box and she shrilled her head off. I was about 7 years old. He collected bygone days tools and gadgets from the past and built a small museum of odd looking objects and tools of various ages in used to stage stalls at fund raising events and parties for people to guess what the objects were and several different items were used to pay for a go to if you guessed correctly you won a prize. The backyard was a place for old farm tools for ploughing and arable tools to old fashioned stage coaches lamps and miners lamps to become a great source of inspiration to crafting skills and older tools and machines.
I still have a few questions. So how long would it take to light a bulb that's 300000 km away with a 300000km long wire. Is the answer the speed of light here ?
If the electrons drift at such a low speed, why do electrical effects seem to occur immediately after a switch is thrown, such as
when you turn on the room lights? Confusion on this point results
from not distinguishing between the drift speed of the electrons
and the speed at which changes in the electric feld configuration
travel along wires. This latter speed approaches that of light. Similarly, when you turn the valve on your garden hose, with the hose
full of water, a pressure wave travels along the hose at the speed
of sound in water. The speed at which the water moves through
the hose— measured perhaps with a dye marker—is much lower.
It has always been a mystery to me that people do not understand the flow of electricity. I think of it like if you hit a nail with a hammer the energy is transferred from one end to the other except instead of a physical blow it is flux or movement of energy that is being transferred from one end to the other. The wire only directs the path. If you receive a shock by touching a naked wire it is because you interfere with the path. Electrical energy "jumps" to you if you approach too close because a field around you attracts the energy more than the field around the wire directing its flow. Electrons themselves definitely do not move or else wires would deplete the atoms that make up the wires as energy is lost in heat given off. The heat actually to cause wires to change form as the heat causes expansion between their atoms as observed when heating elements droop. Insulation merely reflects the energy or heat back to its source.
What if instead of using AC you use DC. Do the electrons then proceed from one end the other?
I'm 66 years old. As a child, we lived near large transmission lines in a rural area of CA. They passed over one of our pastures. We had a small water pump shed near the base of one of the towers. I "helped" my dad bury the power wires to the pump shed, 400 ft. from our barn/shop when he was installing a new pump. My dad used pipe strapping tape to mount some fluorescent tubes inside and outside of the shed. Everynight the lights were always on and I asked him why. He took me out to the shed, and asked me if I felt anyything... I realized that the hairs on my arms felt tingly, and I felt something in my ears. He explained about how such high voltage cables as above "induce" a magnetic field way around the big cables, that's what gives me the feelings, and what makes the tubes glow like they were wired to something. That had to have been 1960 /61- as I had just started 1st grade. He drew some sketches to show how "he thought" it worked. He gave me a basic electricity book and quizzed me every once in awhile. His sketches looked just like your graphics. I guess my dad WAS a lot smarter when I was younger. LOL
@Rex Schneider Electric fields exist anytime you have an electric charge. That could be a single electron or a single proton. You can have a solitary electric point charge such as those particles. Anytime an electric field is moving or changing (so an electron moving or the potential/energy level of the electron is changing) you will have an equal but perpendicular magnetic field matching the electric field. Another way of saying it is a change in voltage or any current at all will result in a magnetic field.
What you said about voltage creating electric fields is sort of right since any charge will have an electric field. And yes, current will create a magnetic field since that represents a changing electric field. But the way you said it suggests that these things are more different than they are (at least in respect to the relationship with magnetic fields).
@Faladrin You'll just confuse yourself worrying about single particles. The effects we're concerned with here are bulk effects and it's important to understand the magnitude of these effects to make any sense of what's going on. If you have a moving charge, then you may have a moving electric field locally, but by definition you have a current, and you can relate the magnitude of the magnetic field directly to the current, without having to try to estimate changes to electric fields in bulk materials and the consequent magnetic field induced.
What I said about voltage creating electric fields isn't just "sort of right"; it's exactly right, because the vector value of the electric field at any point is precisely the gradient of the potential at that point. regardless of where the voltage is coming from. For example, the voltage that arises from a changing magnetic field will create an electric field that you can characterise without having to work out the movement of charges in order to describe it.
Of course the effects are inter-related, but the reason why I said what I said in the way that I said it is that in the extremes, you can have a large static electric field that can induce a voltage along the length of a piece of wire without any associated magnetic field (as in static electricity), and you can have a large static magnetic field created by a steady current without any associated electric field (as in superconducting coils).
Although most of the time both electric and magnetic fields exist together, it is important to have a grasp of the relative magnitude of the effects of each one. If I'm trying to amplify very tiny signals, I may need to shield cables to prevent stray alternating electric fields from adding noise, but I also may need to eliminate earth loops to prevent picking up hum from mains-induced alternating magnetic fields. If I have an idea of the relative magnitudes of each effect, I can see how much effort I need to take in minimising each one, and where compromises have to be made. In some applications the issue of interference for electric fields may be negligible, in others we can ignore the magnetic fields, but we won't know unless we can appreciate the size of each effect.
@MucaroBoricua You clearly have no education.
That story felt like a scene in a movie, very cool.
Your dad was definitely "smarter than the average bear!" per Yogi.
Electricity has to be generated at these plants. Like the hoover damn or large solar fields. The energy just isnt in the lines.
you've triggered my mind also. thanks sir!
One simple question, if the light bulb can be turned on immediately, can we cut the wire at two far ends that are 1/2 light-second away? if we cut the wire, can the light bulb still turn on????????
Hang on, so how does energy flow in a direct current circuit? There are no changing magnetic and electric fields. Only constant electric and magnetic fields.
Speaking as an electrical engineer, electricity is the closest thing in to magic that everyday people deal with.
I deal with conceptualizing electricity and electrical components every day, and you're kind of forced to think of amperes like your chain analogy, voltage like water pressure, transformers like gear boxes, etc.
But you have to keep in the back of your mind the whole time "but it's not water mains or a gearbox, it's electricity". It's simple up close but a whole other different thing when you try to think of the whole power grid at once.
My advice to laypeople? Learn what you can, and marvel at the physics of electricity with me! ...But call a professional if you need to wire a car charger into your garage.
Yes! Misquoting E.P. Box, those theories of 'current flow' and 'electron flow' are... technically wrong. But they are useful. Electricians and engineers can use those models to make the world around us a better place. But they are still "NQR" (Not Quite Right). Much like Newton's theory of gravity, not totally true, but incredibly useful.
Even on the small scale dealing with microwave signals, using power dividers and the like it requires you to move away from those analogies as well. Of course, engineers in these fields create their own "incorrect" analogies as well.
@Uhhhhh my apologies, I did not intend to imply that working electricians had no technical knowledge - merely that that knowledge is more practically oriented and does not require the vector calculus electromagnetic theory found in physics and electrical engineering.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong about that. I am not a qualified electrician on paper, but i am familiar with the whole of the (uk) wiring regulations, and there is certainly nothing of the sort in there.
@Uhhhhh , but as with most subjects, there are layers upon layers of understanding and 'theory'. A lot of college electrical/electronics engineering curriculums expose students to the basic subject of fields and the 'what's REALLY going on', but then base almost everything else on more accessible, everyday 'theory' that is easier to learn and remember, and if followed will still result in predictable results. As an retired Electrical Engineer whose background is more along the Electronics end of things, I am well aware that my whole career was based on simplified theory, simplified equations, and many rules of thumb, compounded by rules and codes and conventions. Unless the engineer is doing something very cutting edge or 'scientific', they don't really need to know these less-intuitive fine points, and even if they know them they probably won't use them in everyday real-world engineering practice.
And for different jobs, there are different knowledge groups and areas of expertise. Most Electronics Technicians will have different levels and depths of knowledge than will Electronics Engineers than will Electrical Engineers than will Electricians then will 'pure physicists' (scientists). Each group will be able to stump the other groups with arcane and practical things they have been taught or learned through practice and experience. There are very few people who have truly widespread knowledge and expertise across all aspects of a given field.
I don't recall enough of the 'true theory' I was exposed to early in college, since other than being vaguely aware of it, I never needed to use it. As such, I can't comment of the level of veracity in THIS video, and some aspects might have been glossed over or ignored which would cast at least parts of the subject into a different light. I think some other commenters have said about the same thing. Sometimes videos like this can be so narrow or incomplete as to cause more confusion than clarity.
science is about practicality not truth
so how do fuses in conductors work, if the energy is flowing outside of the conductor?
I don't know, but in my experiment, it takes time to light up, my voltage was 5 v
If your theory is correct, then you will know the if there's any break point at the far-end of the circuit within 1/c seconds after turn on your switch, this implies superluminal information transfer.
You won't because electrons have to populate the circuit before power can flow. They do that at the speed of light, but along the path of the circuit. If the circuit is 1 light year in circumference you will have to wait 1 year to see if the light comes on.
I have the same question. He says the light would turn on in 1/c seconds but that would imply something about the circuit 300k km away.
How far I listen to this I'm going to State what I learned was the possibility a long time ago, and that is that the energy transfer is a Surface phenomenon and it doesn't run through the core of the wire but on the surface of the wire
This actually raises more questions than it answers.
@Jaden Exactly my point. You are bang on!
The solution is to stop watching Veritasium and listen to real professionals instead. This guy is a joke, all of his videos are just bait and pseudoscience, or basic phenomenons disguised as something far more advanced and mysterious than they really are. This is just a mass-disinformation channel and it's sickening that Youtube allows content like this while selectively banning other people for making content that challenges their political agenda.
@noise5555 Its proven by Facebook and COVID hysteria. Stipidity and conspiracy spreads faster than anythig else, its real time, instant.
@Piotr Grzonka not all knowledge, some things are known to an end.
@Jaden Did you see that video of light in slow motion?
Can we transfer information using this faster than with speed of light? If there were a switch far from our light bulb and battery, but we can see if lamp works almost instantly, then we would get the information about consistency of our chain almost instantly and about state of the switch that is few light seconds from us…
Perhaps lifi?
Well what type of information would you transfer from a light bulb, Because only light can be seen from far away, not other form which you refer to as information.
Because the light you see from the bulb, and the information you transmit order to the bulb can't go faster than the speed of light, how is this supposed to be faster than light?
Pretty interesting but I have a question, how come you get an electric shock when you touch a naked wire in that circuit with AC
Because you make a part of the circuit and those energy waves go through you.
This is false. You’re using correlation as causation. Indeed there is energy all around the wire. But only because there is energy traveling through the wire. You are sending people down rabbit holes.
you become the light bulb ;)
What happens to flux when exit? Does it reduces?
So if fields transfer energy does strong magnets disable the flow?
I know you predicted pushback, and with good reason, so here it is. I’m not saying this video is wrong, but at best, it’s incomplete.
First off, the fields can’t intrinsically be separated from the flow of charges as if the electron drift isn’t significant. For the magnetic fields to permeate free space in the first place, the charges must undergo acceleration to create them, and if you cut off the switch, the fields would collapse without the current. If I turned on a fan next to a piece of paper and the paper flew away, would it be accurate to say that the air alone did the deed? Sure, the energy that moved the paper was transferred to it by the air, but neglecting that the fan moved the air in the first place would be a glaring omission.
It’s also essential to remember that the Poynting vector itself is DERIVED from the continuity equation (local conservation of charge), and what it represents is the interplay between the energy transfer among the fields and the movement of the charges that generate them. In other words, fields don’t carry energy on their own without the movement of charge. Also, the vast majority of energy transfer in the fields happens extremely close to the wires, and the graphic that you’ve given of these fields taking such wild departures away from the circuit ignores the infinitesimal magnitude by which this happens.
With regards to your experiment, the following should be noted. Yes, there would be some current flow instantly with the closing of the switch, but only because the electric field in the conducting wire has had time to reach equilibrium along its length. If instead of a switch, you connected the wires to the leads of the battery directly, the propagation of the electric field along the circuit would occur at a speed less than that of light in free space. Lastly, I challenge you to explain the energy release from the actual light bulb that doesn’t involve electrons flowing through the filament.
Also, I posted the following as a reply further on in this thread, but I'm putting it here because it's important. The power (energy per time) that a circuit puts out is always IV (current times voltage). This relation makes no reference to fields of any sort. Now, it is absolutely true that the electric and magnetic fields carry the energy – the current does not – but when one takes the spatial integration over the Poynting vector, it always reproduces the power law P=IV. The fields carry the energy, but the current generates it. You can change those fields in a million different ways and the circuit will behave the same. For example, wrapping the wires in a grounded sheet of aluminum foil creates shielding, which is how high transmission data cables such as CAT6 or COAX reduce noise and capacitance between wires. You could say that they contain the electric fields within the space of the insulation. You could also coil the wires into an electromagnet. However you reconfigure the fields themselves, the fact is that the overall power dissipation of a circuit depends on the current, not on the field strength, and to trivialize this fact by focusing on how the energy is carried is confusing and misleading. As with my earlier analogy to a fan blowing air, the energy may be carried away by the air, but the amount of that energy depends solely on the power output of the fan.
Ultimately this video has some good information, but it is also extremely misleading, and I caution people to take any claims that “they way you understand things is false” with a grain of salt. Usually, there’s more nuance than that, and as something of a cynic myself, I think it’s often a form of clickbait. I encourage interested viewers to look elsewhere for the full picture of electrodynamics in all its beauty.
If the current in the wire generates the fields, but the fields carry the energy, then the current caused the energy flow. Current × (voltage drop across entire circuit) = power (rate of energy use).
If the energy is NOT being carried by the wire, why do we need heavy-gauge wire in our homes, rather than cheap, thin wire? Because wire has resistance in the real world, so high currents will generate more heat in a thin wire, melting it. However, if the energy is carried by the fields, not the wire, why can't we use cheap, thin wire? If, to create those "powerful fields" that carry a lot of energy, the WIRE must carry a lot of current, then....
Current × (voltage drop across circuit) = power, which is energy/unit of time.
Power × Time = Energy
So, if the wires carry current, then they transmit power. Over a span of time, they've supplied energy to the device. Magnetic fields are present, but are NOT doing WORK unless you pass a conductor in a closed circuit through them.
The video is wrong.
Thanks for explaining this better. I wanted to call bullish but I didn't have the education. I need thick thick wires to move DC current over distance - the channel is saying "throw resistance out the window" for this experiment... which means throw out any real load and throw out distance (so why not throw out wires entirely).
your comment is boring to read so ill just leave this as a belief, so dont get too upset. fields exist 'instantaneously'. perception of that isnt a scientific aspect. you simply arent in the fields instant area of influence until you are. the 'until you are' part is simply based on perception. the field exists where it exists as it exists. its not a production, its just an 'is'. like space.
@warrenwilson You said " Lastly, I challenge you to explain the energy release from the actual light bulb that doesn’t involve electrons flowing through the filament", what energy release is this?
@Marc Fruchtman Ty for saving my sanity. I was questioning the DC battery. Bcs I know that energy flows around the wires mostly in AC high voltage systems.
What if the light bulb was 1 light second away?
This is why Nikolai Tesla figured out that you can wireless transmit energy/power.
E - electricity will flow instantaneously since each electron pushes the next one. It moves together.
Even if that was how it works, that still isn't instantaneous. Electrons pushing each other would create a compression wave that moves through the electrons at the speed of sound in the electron medium.
If you could surround a wire with a medium that blocked or shielded the field, would no current flow?
I think that was the effect of the iron casing of the undersea cable+dampening from the sea.
The iron casing didnt block current it had capacitance and disrupted the integrity of the signal
Haven DeZeeuw - 2021-12-06
I’m so glad this video exists. I use to completely not even understand how electricity worked, and now I still don’t.
Mustafizur Rahman - 2022-09-09
😋😋😁😁
Dallas Szafwinski - 2022-09-09
Great comment
Royston Boodoo - 2022-09-09
😀
Flurgy22 - 2022-09-10
I used to believe i understood how electricity worked, now I don't , how can I find the blue pill and take it?
diannef315 - 2022-11-07
It is amazing how human beings were able to figure out how to use Quantum Fields to generate electricity with wires and send radio and tv signals through what seemed like just air.