Hacker News Reader

So electrons aren't actually moving from one place to another?

In order to get a sustained current, you need to put electrons in one end and take them out from the other in equal numbers. Thus mass doesn't change.

However, if you're talking about static electricty, you can actually create a mass imbalance by taking a few electrons away from one side or putting some electrons on the other. It's a very, very, very small change in mass.

Ben Franklin’s definition of current, otherwise known as the standard one, has positive charge carriers.

You're talking about conventional current, and it's nothing more than a polite fiction. We model circuits as current moving from positive to negative, but with the implicit understanding that the real charge moves the opposite direction.

Positive charge carriers do not actually exist[0]. There's only electrons and holes they can go into. We can talk about the movement of holes, but that's a virtual charge carrier at best.

Conventional current is just a convention. It's what we started with (because Franklin was wrong) and it's too much effort to change now. In practice, the distinction almost never matters. Sometimes it does, but not enough that it's worth overhauling the entire field of electronics.

[0] of course positrons and protons exist, but they aren't relevant to electronic circuits

Reply on news.ycombinator.com