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From: khanacademy
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  • Sal, you should write a book on physics! Most books are not that great.

  • Charges flow *through* batteries of course. A common high-school misconception is that no current exists in the electrolyte, or that battery internal impedance is large (when it's actually near zero.)

    Electrons don't flow in circuits, they flow in *metal* circuits. Include a human in your circuit (electric shock,) and there's no electron flow in that living tissue. Same with salt water, the earth, etc. Yes, all circuits are conductors with flowing charge, but they aren't all metals w/electrons

  • Mr. Alexander, you should watch this...

  • I think you said something that's not completly correct Sal. The electrons has different speeds (m/s) before and after the resistance, but the current is the same. The electron are just more "dense" after the resistance right? Because they loose some of their speed and therefore some energy which leaves the circuit as heat?

  • @DoS37 by definition of current "rate of flow of charge"...if u say after the purpose of the resistor is to resist the flow of current ..ths means less flow of electron pet unit time..in other words we can say that we have slow down the electrons...by applying resistance in the path of flow of electron

  • @775shahrukh ..

  • @775shahrukh

    Yeah but then has the current and the voltage changed from a scenario without a resistor? Because they travel slower you say, and therfore has lower energy, which leads to less voltage. And since they travel slower, there is a lower current aswell. Am I following you correctly?

  • @DoS37 sorry i couldnt get u

  • Your one of the cool famous people.

  • Comment removed

  • sorry sal im already confused. Do the electrons flow from the negative terminal tot he positive or positive to negative?? you've lost me there. anyone answer this. plz :D

  • @gotty19 Electrons flow from negative to positive. Although we say that the "current" flows from positive to negative. But the electrons always flows "against" the current.

  • @Laimonel oh kk thanks for explaining man appreciate it! :D

  • @gotty19

    Electrons flow from the negative terminal of the battery.

  • Electrons flow from the negative

    @ShakkIsLife true, if you're certain that the conductors are metal. If they're electrolytes, then the charge is both pos and neg, and flows in both directions. Same with plasmas. In Proton conductors the charges flow from pos to neg. Physics simplifies this stuff by ignoring the actual charges polarity and declaring them all to be positive. Realworld Ammeters measure CC Conventional Current, and they can't detect the charge carrier polarity.

  • I litteraly have a quiz on this tomarrow i am so glad that there is video i can turn to and not just my teachers lectures.

  • the electrons in the circuit are called conduction electrons !!! thanks for the videos salman sir

  • i was gonna paste a comment but realised you can talk to people who already know everything

  • @ khanacademy i love you soo much.. ! you're the best teacher ever!

  • Wow, thanks. I've been reading about power supplies and the book was telling me the "wrong" direction of flow and it was really stunting my learning. Does this mean you can measure any circuit's in/out w/ multimeter set to ohms and divide that number by the voltage it needs and get how many amps you need for it?

  • It really annoys me that the stupid scientists had to make conventional current flow the wrong way. Like seriously!!!? Why confuse people??

  • @abtarabishy It was Ben Franklin who came up with the sign convention for currents and charges in the late 1700s. At that time there was no way he could have known that the charge carrier in metals is the electron. It would not be until JJ Thomson discovered electrons about a hundred years later that this became an issue, but by that time the convention was firmly entrenched.

  • @gullenator1 yea i know but it's still really annoying.

  • To be honest, his videos are worth watching over and over again because of his simple methods of teaching the subject. No doubt some critics have pessimistic intentions concerning his English Grammar and Pronunciation of the words. No man is complete and it is obvious that this gentleman is not an English native, but might be a descendant of either Indian origin or Pakistan.

  • I'm always so happy to hear your voice. Thanks Sal.

  • Sal needs to make an "intuitive" tutorial.

  • If i was to try explain why current was initially chosen to flow from + to - i would look towards ions. When an electron is lost, the atom has an overall + charge in basic terms. So... if you relate this to circuitry it would seem that electrons are lost from the anode giving it a positive charge and "arrive" at the cathode giving it it's negative charge. However wrong it may be, it was the first thing i expected before being told how electrons actually flow in a circuit. If that helps? :)

  • @amak2314 you haven't met alot of 13 year old have ya'?I do that too, but like to feel smart once in a while.

  • Great video!!! Thumbs up

  • Also, the idea of potential and such deviating talk is NOT helpful but confuses matters more in this area.

  • NO your Not correct.. The power is at the POSITIVE terminal ..

    I am hearing this all over the place about how the flow is from the negitive... but that does not work out in practice.

  • At 3:55 he says current goes from + to -. Then why do the electrons go anti clockwise? against the flow of current? sorry im confused

  • @lazer1235

    outside the battery is from + to -.

    inside from - to +.

  • @lazer1235 its only convention. actually called passive sign convention. There are probably vids on how it works. including power dissipation. power going into circuit, power leaving circuit, power from place a to b.

  • Do some soldering

  • great video, thanks man!!

  • Yo khanacademy, you should try holding shift when u do a line, it make a straight one (locking on the axis)

  • Isn't Voltage written as U ? like U/R = I ?

  • Are you sure you havent had anything to drink :P

  • Mr.Khan, I understand that you are trying to stay as close to reality as possible with the direction of electron flow. However, most or all students that watch this video want to learn the way it is taught in class. So, can you please stick with the "wrong" way the electrons flow? I still love your videos. Thank you.

  • @ficklegirl11 The Khan Academy is about delivering quality education, not conforming to extensive and exaggerated notation traditionally adopted by public education systems. If you want to purposely learn this in the unintuitive way just to pass your class, then sorry bud, but the Khan Academy wasn’t created with you in mind. And given that fact, there’s nothing that you should be complaining about.

  • gawd why did he mention that the e- are travelling backwards...

  • I guess I meant the combination of software and hardware. I imagine that there must be some kind of tablet, akin to a small interactive whiteboard, that you can use with a stylus "pen" to write and draw on.

  • Does anyone happen to know the name of the hardware used to produce this tutorial?

  • @Dajavoutube you meant to say software, right? for this particular video, Sal used Microsoft Paint. But in later videos, he used some other software that I am not familiar with. You could probably try googling: Sketching software or something like that.

  • Khan's explanation is very good for basic understanding, but for a college level physics I had to make my own video. Just add youtube.com to

    /watch?v=LWaPlBkzlVA

    If this is inappropriate I'll remove. Hopefully, Khan can make a more indepth video.

  • Comment removed

  • But isn't resistance futile?

  • @TheEricBooth Hahahahaha

  • this also help me itunes.apple.com/us/app/star2d­elta/id417605678?mt=8

  • Bickering over grammatical errors over the internetz further proves that the human race is actually devolving. Rather than doing something productive with our lives, we get into e-battles on youtube. Awesome! How far we have come...

  • fucken awesome video

  • My god! Get on with it! You talk about one little thing for 5 hours!

  • @IHaveBigWood no-one's forcing you to watch it. skip ahead if you understand it :)

  • we should probably build a temple for Mr.Khan and name the religion Khanism and praise him. Our religious practice will be solving equations.

  • tell me tutor , has any student offered sexual favours for As in your class? :))

  • I really wish I could have an instructor like this for electrical lectures I am going through right now. He makes it simple, and thats all we need.

  • i love how people on youtube love to argue about mindless things...no matter what the topic of the video might be.

  • this guy rambles on a lot

  • @kevinyo12 yes, someone learning this doesn't give a rat's about direction of flow... put + to + and minus to minus. The reason for the "old" flow thought is the concept of ground., lightning goes to ground, therefore, the positive charge of flow is created and seeks a ground. Save the theory for a different video. Keep It Simple Stupid ! His problem of continue to correct flow direction.. ruined the video!

  • battery is a magical thing??

    i was also taught before that it was the + which had the power not neg.

    one way to test this is.. connect one lead wire of a light to postive and ground the other .. if the light goes on ..its the positive that holds it.. try it also with negative..

    attach one to negitive and ground the other wire from a light.. HEY it doesn't go on.. what do ya know

  • Hey, It would help if you had a separate video in between Electric potential energy and circuits talking about Ohms Laws. Just a suggestion based on what our curriculum is at school. :)

  • Very nice video, indeed highly informative. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, Khan.

    Btw, is there an explanation as to why the old convention is opposite to the reality and it still has not been changed in most of the textbooks?

  • I got lost at ohm's law. and the v= to balhblahalha. can someone explain to me that? haha 13 here.not very smart. yeah.

  • @poshablyposh why are u watching videos on physics....shouldn't u be watching tv or playing videogames?

  • Nice one...!

  • You sir, are the greatest instructor about this, to me you know so much about this and explain it in extreme depth. Very informative and helpful, love the videos. You have helped me with all my questions and confusions 5/5 keep it up!

  • your way better than matthews

  • Thank you. You are the best teacher I`ve ever had. Especially the positive and negative end, and the travel of electrons had me confused from other sources. I just find it extremely weird that they keep that "other way around" confusion.

  • 7:54, I don't get it, why does he say that it slows down at the resistor point, but then he says it must be not be slower than the other points?

  • @rinwhr Think of the electrons as cars going round a one-way road. If the cars in front slow down, and the cars behind are moving really fast, there will be a crash. We don't want this to happen. In the same way, the electrons don't want to bump into each other if they don't have to, and so the elctrons behind the electrons in the resistor must go the same speed, or electrons will be bumping into eachother all over the place, and no current would flow. Current means the flow of electrons.

  • @rinwhr He means that without the resistor, it would go lets see a speed at 100 but with the resistor it goes a speed at 50. but the electrons dont build up, they flow constantly. the resistor makes the electrons go slower, but there is a constant flow no matter what throughout the entire circuit.

  • constant even flow*

  • sir, you are a life saver. thank you so much! i feel like dropping out of school and just watching your videos to learn!

  • OMG Thank You soo much!!! I actually get all this stuff now. :)

  • awesome explanations. Helped out a great deal. THanks

  • thanks man!!! you are graet teacher!!!!!

  • this is really great and helpful. Can you please say something about KIRCHOFF'S RULE?

  • @Yohannesiscool Kirchoff's Rule is simply the Loop Rule and Junction Rule. Loop rule is everything in a contained Circuit loop must be equal, and Junction rule is any Current going in must equal all Current going out.

  • scratchy line lol

    i like this guy!

  • ok, i love all your videos....have been watching them since First year engineering. One quick note, about ohms law.....that phenomenon has to be clearly explained as constant. When V/I is constant, then and only then ohms law can be mentioned. Thanks :)

  • @Denmen248 hahaha "then and only then" of course u're an engineer :P

  • Great explanation! Good Jobs could you pls do more video on electrical analysis.

  • omg thank you so much khan! my physics teacher SUCKS and he never teaches, but thanks to you i actually might not fail the AP test!!

  • hey,y is this resistor present in the circuit ?

  • Comment removed

  • Well, relativistic mass, yes. Rest mass, no.

  • Mass-Energy Equivalence was used in the development of the atom bomb. What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved it worked.

    The reasoning is simple. Newtonian Physics said if you traveled at the speed of light, you should see peaks and troughs of light waves. Maxwell's equations forbids that.

    Where is the proof either exists?

    It is not an optical illusion, you go back in time.

    Once more, torsion fields are pseudoscience.

  • Wait... what? You believe one part of Special Relativity, and yet you reject the other...

  • Please see my above post. It is the one where you talked about Tesla.

  • So?

  • Einstein's theories have been proven experimentally. E=mc^2 has been proven by studying electrons almost at the speed of light and the atomic bomb. General relativity has been proven during a solar eclipse by showing that light was bending because of bends in space time. Particle smashers have never been able to go past the speed of light. Synchronized clocks have been seen going differently when they are moving. Once more, I never said laws.

  • Torsion Fields are a pseudoscience topic with severely flawed postulates. Neutrinos do in fact have both energy and mass. Gravity is the weakest of all forces. Why should it succeed where electromagnetism failed? A household magnet is stronger than all of the earth's gravity. That is a sample of the greater difference between the forces. It is just that most molecules are magnetically neutral, so we don't experience it as much as gravity. Gravity is only noticeable because earth is massive.

  • But, if it goes that fast, why doesn't it go just a little bit faster? It is 3 m/s away. Why not a little faster? Only three logical explanations exist, or that I know of. The workers got tired, there was not enough funding, or it's impossible. They can hire new workers, or seek one of several ways to earn money.

  • The Large Hadron Collider can move protons at about 99.9999991% of the speed of light. Why won't it go any faster? why not 101%? I never said "law", by the way. Why did you include it in the comment? Theories can, in fact, also be supported by observations. But, they can be falsified. Theories can be edited. But, E=mc^2 's derivation is so simple, all it requires is some background in calculus.

  • How about this. When you run, you require energy. As you approach the speed of light, it requires tremendous amounts of energy. that translates, through E=mc^2, more mass, requiring more energy to move it further. In the end, it requires infinite amounts of energy to travel at the speed of light. You probably have no background in this. To call this child play is stupid, considering the time people spent on this without finding contradiction.

  • i agree with you jaguar. There is actually believed to be particles that cannot go SLOWER than the speed of light, but can go up to infinity faster. If humans harnessed this, we could surround a spacecraft with these particles, arrive at our destination, then drop the field. Its hard for diade to understand that, as with many people, which is prolly why hes diagreeing. Dont worry, I know your right :D

  • Those particles have always meant the end of a theory. Every time they appeared, the theory was modified. Please see me response up there. Really, please do.

  • lady gaga

  • at someplace in the world electrons are sped up to go nearly the speed of light but not over it.

  • in conclusion, a potential difference of over a trillion volts will not make an electron exceed the speed of light.

  • I understand that. However, in the LHC and other colliders, they are unable to accerate particles to the speed of light, so currently, Einstein's theories are holding strong. And they are basically the building blocks of all other theories since Einstein's time. They are accepted as fact by the large majority of the scientific community.

  • If your going to disagree with the fact that an object with mass can travel at or faster then the speed of light, you should not be viewing physics videos. But go ask your little alien friends, im sure they'll be happy to answer your questions with answers that your little mind can comprehend.

  • lol at diadmonter...same here

  • "We already have proof that extraterrestrials have been visiting earth for thousands of years..."

    stop reading your comment at that point.

  • Go try it then, if you can make an electron exceed the speed of light, you will prove a very very large amount of scientific theories wrong, Best of luck.

  • nah, to get a mass to the speed of light, you would need potential difference of infinity :/ so more then infinity to go faster then c o.o

  • V=(current)*(resistance), or V=IR, current uses Amps as a unit of measurement as resistance uses ohms as a unit of measurement, however "I" denotes current but is written in units of "A", or amps.

  • AD64039 IS AN IDIOT AND HAS NO IDEA ABOUT OHMS LAW. V=AxR, THAT VOLTS EQUALS AMPS TIMES RESISTANCE OR R=V/A, A=V/R AND THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU STILL DON'T NEED TO KNOW WATTS LAW. SOME PEOPLE THINK THEY KNOW IT ALL. HA!

  • V=IR not V=AR

    Plus Sal Has An Electrical Engineering Masters Degree, i think he knows what he is talking about dude.

  • V=AR...interesting, I wonder what Stark would say ironman

  • This guy sucks, electrons going from + to - is called the "Conventional Theory" which is what we first thought when we saw electricity moving. Like the l.e.d. signs that are going one direction but look like thier going another. Once we had the technology of microscopes to see the electrons moving we figured out they actually move from - to +, this is called the "Electron Theory" The people who use this are engineers. The conventional theory is still used in cars, houses, etc.

  • Search for:

    Movement of single electron captured on video

    Here on youtube, and don't post again before killing your ignorance first.

  • Comment removed

  • @ironman2much4u sorry but you can't see electrons...

  • Comment removed

  • ironman--Here's a thought: Before calling someone an imbecile, you should learn how to spell, captialize, and punctuate properly. Basically, you should learn how to write. Mmmm-kay? FYI: It's "ignorance" and "embarrassment". Also, in the last sentence, it's "you're," not "your".

  • Comment removed

  • @3e3op88 stfu with that grammar stuff. who cares if he capitilizes or not, this is not a formal letter that, hes handing into a professor. if your gonna criticize something, criticize what hes saying. and yes i didnt use caps to piss you off.

  • Comment removed

  • @3e3op88 In all your wisdom, maybe you could educate me. I am unaware of what the word "captialize" means.

  • @sleigh93 That was a typo, jackass.

  • @3e3op88 He just wrote it fast and was to lazy to correct it the point is he is smarter than you. Just a couple of errors in his text doesn't mean anything. Bitch.

  • @TeenageIronman Don't you get tired of having yourself around, dickhead?

  • @3e3op88 im not him faggot

  • @3e3op88 We're not all writing a formal essay. It's called "abbreviation" and it's not ignorant: merely fast.

  • @kiemul136 well, but to mistake "You're" with "Your" isn't just fast, it's also ignorant, same as " I should of done this" instead of "I should have done this"...

    It's just proof that such person never took a hold of a book and read it

  • @ironman2much4u u can't see electrons...

  • This guy does videos on every topic. He is not an expert at electric theory or anything for that matter. I guess anyone can put a video here.

  • he's got a masters in electrical engineering that should count for something

  • err it actually makes a little sense to consider the direction of flow to be from pos to neg sign charge,

    this way, as charges will want to move towards a lower pot energy in the direction of the field vector, they will give up positive sign "kinetic energy" as they do, which translates to electric current.

    otherwise we'd be dealing with negative potential diffs, like the drop over a resistor will be -0.5V, or a regular battery will be labeled "-1.5V", which would really sound awkward.

  • thank you so much, this has really help me understand circuits alot more, keep up the good work :)

  • Current and Resistance are related to voltage according to Ohm's Law. V=IR where I is the current and obviously R is the Resistance

  • Pay close attention between, 6:30 and 9:00. It's the pressure that slows down the flow of the electrons from the battery.

  • I dont get how the resistance has anything too do with the voltage, I get that the current is relative too the voltage, but voltage and the resistance?? please explain. thanks.

  • say the resistance is a cashier and charges are clients.

    So, for a charge to pass through it has to consume a bit of its own energy to overcome such resistance. so the tem voltage or potential difference is considered the work consumed by the charge to cross such resistance.

    so we cosider charges flow from high potential to lower potential.

  • These videos are awesome..very helpfull...thank you from Slovakia ;)

  • Electricity is a flow of electrons (negatively-charged particles). So the electrons will be attracted to areas of positive charge, and will flow to that area, so the electron flow is ACTUALLY from negative to positive. BY CONVENTION, however, electrons are depicted moving from positive to negative. I THINK this idea started out because people assumed that electrons would move to areas occupied by their own kind, before they knew about electrostatics. Since this idea does not necessarily...

  • ...come into conflict with modern electrical design, the convention was kept.

  • the convention is the opposite of reality, because the convention represents the flow of positive charges. Since electrons are moving from the right to the left, the positive charges, the lack of electrons, move from left to right.

  • Current is the amount of charge passing per second (the q in dq/dt is charge).

  • I know but the way your saying it current goes from negative to positive. But current goes from positive to negative.

  • Current does go from negative to positive. The reason why people think that it goes from positive to negative is because (as Sal said) the original pioneers of electric technology mislead us by saying that the current flows from positive to negative.

  • Your right. I was wrong. The reason it is, is Benjamin Franklin didn't know what electrons where. But in engineering (circuit making in this case) goes from positive to negative.

  • Yes from positive from negative is called conventional flow and is used in the textbooks

  • But in circuits you don't use electron flow. You do use conventional flow.

  • Current is normally defined as I= - dQ/dt. This eliminates the need for drama.

  • thanks man that helped me a lot...

  • lol ohh yeahh u saved me a lot of money.....

  • Principles of Electricity video is better. It's in the Related Videos menu...

  • excellent

    you saved me alots of money

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