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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

How much do folks who learned electronics feel that they were, or would have been, helped by introducing electron flow before switching to the mainstream sign convention for current?

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It wouldn't have helped at all. Until you get into device physics, the actual magnitude and sign of the charge carrier is totally irrelevant.

That was kinda my experience too. The mental training wheels that I came up with were based on remembering that like charges repel, so the electrons flee the negative terminal. But it didn't take me very long to simply regard voltage and charge as quantities of "stuff" related by equations.

Yeah, I've also found that the abstract approach is what pays the most dividends. When I taught electronics lab, the physics students would get wrapped up in trying to think from the point of view of fields and charges, which honestly isn't that helpful for electronics (unless, as mentioned above, you're doing device physics).

On the other hand, research (by the PhET folks in Colorado I believe) has shown that having students play with a Java applet beforehand (that shows electrons moving through wires) really helps their performance in a basic electronics lab activity. This would be measuring voltage, resistance, current. However it's likely that the sandbox nature of the applet is what helps, not so much the moving charge concept.

Possibly a confounding factor is that electricity is so incredibly badly taught in the high school and college physics courses, or at least it was when I was a student. Most students ended up hating electricity. I have had more than one person cite the "oscilloscope lab" as the experience that turned them away from physics.

It's too bad, because if well taught, electricity could really reinforce another aspect of physics that students struggle with, namely the ability to solve complex problems by replacing fields with scalar quantities (e.g., stuff that's conserved), thus replacing calculus with accounting.

Also, I would completely ditch the oscilloscope (at the intro level), replacing it with something that simply measures voltage versus time into a computer.

I was taught electron flow from the get-go in high school, as it correctly represents electron emission off a hot cathode. I still use it, except I have to think backwards when using a current meter or simulation software, as the industry standard is conventional flow.

Oddly enough, I learned about vacuum tubes but never did anything with them except repair guitar amps. But I can see where an introduction to tube circuitry would want to start with electron flow.

I was taught the same way. I was originally pretty confused by the symbol for a diode, more so because I was dealing with free wheeling diodes at the time.

It doesn't help at all. Unless youre working with devices like FETs that are named using the electron flow convention, keeping the electron flow in mind is not terribly helpful.

However there are some subfields of electronics where it is helpful, but it is a niche thing.

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