Do Electrons Push Each Other?? A Conversation with Veritasium

Thank you for sharing the Stewart–Tolman effect. It seems like a rather nice quantum mechanical analog to Mach's Principle or Newtons Bucket. If electrons are to be treated as excitations of an underlying field, it seems to me that by rotating the turn of wire, the field would need to change shape according to a gravitational transformation. I think you just gave me a nice clue toward a derivation of quantum gravity. The problem has always been how to reconcile the center of mass of the electron with quantum electrodynamics at small scales. It's calculated emergently as an effective center of mass from the probability distribution of the total field.

Hey! Electrons in the conductor absolutely DO carry energy, and not just via the EM field. There's a very famous experiment where the spool of wire is spun up and then abruptly stopped, the mechanical inertia of electrons creates a brief current. This is called Stewart–Tolman effect.

Aleksei Besogonov

My understanding of this is almost certainly flawed but here are my thoughts. The thing I found frustrating about this Veratasium video and subsequent discussion is what I feel the mixing of different levels of abstractions. The videos talk about fields like they are a real thing and not an statistical abstraction of the positions of the electrons at any one moment to make drawing diagrams easier and thinking about effects at a macro scale easier. My mental model as a non-physicist and non-electrical engineer was that in a material like a metal there are moment to moment fluctuations in the amount of electrons in the space around an atom and that affects the probability of an electron moving into of out of an adjacent space. In the case of a wire system you have a conductor material with these fluctuations and adjacent systems which are are able to add or remove electrons to the surface (ends) of the wire such as via a molecule reacting. If these molecular reactions a more likely to happen in one direction rather than the reverse then a suplace of deficit of electrons will build up in that area. Areas with suplace electrons are less likely to have atoms surrounded by insufficient electrons and more likely to have atoms with execs electrons and so on average over time electrons will migrate into adjacent areas with less execs electrons etc. In this way electrons 'flow' through the wire in a turbulent random way. Resistors are just materials where the probability of an electron staying with its existing atom is proportionally higher. Fields are just an abstract way to talk about the average force experienced from electrons and proton charges over a given area of space. I feel that it is disingenuous or at least misleading to say the field is carrying the energy when really what we really mean is the field summarises the forces that are being applied.

Very interesting. I wish we could have a super microscope and observe what is actually happening. I'm going to dream about electrons tonight! However, the biggest question I had during the video : Is the background a close up of Mehdi's chest hair? 🤔🤣

Came here looking for this question, this is a great experiment idea!

I still don't agree with Derek. If the surface of the wire had that much impact on energy transfer then why can you carry more current in a solid conductor vs a stranded conductor? The stranded conductor would have far more surface area than a solid conductor yet can't carry as much current. I think the electrical field is only a byproduct of energy flowing through a conductor in the same way heat is a byproduct of energy flow.

Matt Larson

This would be a great followup.. I second this question!!!

Steve Jones

Does the battery momentarily change state when pieces of conductor come in contact with its terminals? What if there were two open switches in Veritasium's circuit and only one was closed? What if there were no wires and just a battery was spawned next to a bulb? What if I attach two nails to the two ends of a bare battery with my hands? Would that cause the bulb to momentarily glow?

Isn't someone going to mention Pauli Exclusion Principle?? Electrons don't push on each other because they are not bodies, they are excitations of underlying wave functions. They are anti-symmetric spacial wave functions which cancel out for all identical quantum states when added. So when a voltage or E-field is applied the quantum state of the total wave function is boosted or accelerated. The discreet excitations of this wave function, "elementary charges," or the electrons, propagate along with a distribution according to the square of the amplitude of the wave function. They simply won't be measurable in regions where the underlying wave function cancels out.

Come on guys! Dream up some experiments and stop the endless mental modelling.

What is the significance of the conductivity of the material, such as copper? Why can't all wires be equally effective in setting up surface fields and charges? But we know that conductivity is central. Doesn't that imply movement through the wire? Is iron as good a conductor as silver?

Connect a capacitor to a battery with wires. The plates of the capacitor accumulate charges. If electrons don't move through the wires, where do the electrons come from on the plates? Or are there really no electrons on the plates but some mysterious fields without a source?

I posted my [incomplete] theory on the mechanics of current flow in the YouTube video comments, but my focus may have been in a slightly different direction than the discussion between Mehdi and Derek. I would love to hear if anyone has feedback on my perspective, where I impose similarities to fluid mechanics and optics. Also... ... GIMME DA MEETAH 🤣 Mehdi, I am forever a fan. Thank you!

Imran Uddin

Very nice. Doesn't the explanation that surface charge is a primary mechanism of transferring energy relate to why high voltage transmission lines are usually stranded wire to maximize surface area? This deviates a little from your original theoretical E field discussions, but it's perhaps a more tangible application of the theory that shows that surface charge is the driver of current (and thus maximizing surface area increases efficiency). (I posted the same question on YouTube. Not sure which you reply to more.)