Everyone who's taken physics at some point knows about the Right Hand Rule. There are two versions. If you have a wire carrying an electric current, you point your thumb in the direction of the current and your fingers "curl" in the direction of the magnetic field.
The other version is that if you have two out of the following three -- current, magnetic field, and a force -- the right hand rule can help you find the direction of the third one that gets induced from the other two:
Well, there's one really annoying thing about this rule: it requires the current to be moving positive charges! Well, positive charges do move in electric circuits.
A typical example: for every 100,000 negative electrons that move one direction in a circuit, there is one positively charged iron nucleus that moves in the opposite direction. But the reason we use the convention that positive charges move is, hundreds of years ago, there was no way to tell which charge was moving!
Ben Franklin guessed. He had two possibilities, positive and negative. And he guessed wrong. But somehow, hundreds of years later, we're still using his incorrect guess. It drives electricians nuts, because they've switched over to using negative electrical currents, but physicists haven't. Is there a way to fix this?
It isn't hard, all you have to do is use your left hand instead of your right! Same deal, too. Thumb=current, index finger=magnetic field, and middle finger=force. Well, physicists are slow to change their conventions, so perhaps xkcd can help effect change with their comic today:
Really, isn't physics confusing enough without having to deliberately correct for a mistake we know we're making? Or is it that hard to change an educational convention?
- Log in to post comments
That would be so awesome. Then I wouldn't have to put down my pen to check it!
No, it's not that hard. You just need to ... build a time machine, I guess.
We chemists (I'm cheating and calling myself one) were pretty damn lucky that Fischer guessed better than Franklin when he elucidated the relative structures of the sugars. (He guessed at the absolute configuation, not the relative, of course.)
Didn't actually know the convention was due to Franklin. Learn something new every day.
Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?
I don't see the big deal about how current is defined. Bio-electric phenomena such as nerve impulses depend on currents of anions such as Na+ and K+. Semiconductor devices use currents of electron 'holes' -- effectively positive charges. There's a long list of electrical phenomena where current is mediated -- partly or entirely -- by positive charge carriers. Why the electron-centric view?!
The reason the right hand rule is here to stay is that the the the convention is bigger than just the electric force law. Right handed coordinate systems are used by convention in pretty much all of physics laws that contain cross products in three dimensions (not just electrical ones) and also many mathematical theorems. It would be tough to change the rule for just one equation amongst hundreds -- there's too much inertia to change it at this point. All apologies to the electricians!
I'm with Ethan on this one. I'm an undergrad currently in general physics and the whole positive to negative direction of currents confused the hell out of me for like two weeks. It just seems counter intuitive to me!
Right hand rule or left hand rule? In Malaysia, we use neither. We use the right hand grip rule and Fleming's left hand rule for motors and Fleming's right hand rule for generators. Haha
I have to admit, his mistake confused me at at point, trying to figure out if electrons were flowing in one direction, what is flowing the other direction to call current? One of my friend even suggested that it's the empty spaces between electrons =X
electrons just want to have fun.
"It drives electricians nuts, because they've switched over to using negative electrical currents"
Really?? I'm a Electrical Engineer, but we use positive electrical currents. Witch electricians are you talking about?
Well, anyway, there is another type of positive current you forgot to mention, the ionic current...
Torresmo,
Actual electricians, not electrical engineers. You know, the people who wire buildings up, who pull copper wire through pipe and install receptacles and control panels. My wife was one for a few years, and that's how I know.
The thing people don't realize is that if you leave a circuit on all day, the amount that a typical electron moves is on the order of a foot.
Am I from a different universe, or is my memory impaired?
Decades ago I was taught the left-hand-rule and electron motion. When I got to college physics, sophmore year, we were told that scientists had decided to use plus motion and the right-hand-rule.
Neil
helped very much thanks
starts with a bang???? how could 2 little specks in the middle of space start every thing that we see today??? so wat you are telling me is that if i empty out every thing in my garadge and wait 100 years ok not long what about 1000000 years ok so if what yall are saying is if i wait that long a brand new car will apear in my garadge?????
THE BIG BANG IS FALS!!!!!!!!!!!
Franklin probably chose to say current leaves the positive terminal of a battery and enters the negative one for reasons that are purely mathematical. It's easier to deal with positive numbers than with negative numbers when you are calculating what's happening in a circuit, and much more confusing when you have to deal with double negatives. His choice makes the math simpler.
Alex was here (your favorite student)
In quantum biology cancer research, healthy information flows in the opposite direction to entropic energy a process, held by some to evolve consciousness.The cell poised to evolve takes on a electromagnetic infinite fractal expression rather that the extinction process governed by entropic law. Epidemiologists have locate a dysfunctional 3D virus like epidemic transmitted by the mass production of information devices. According to the journal Science(2012),Junk DNA is no longer evolutionary rubbish but is functioning as information and communications devices throughout the entire length of DNA for evolutionary health and well being. The virus-like mathematical information cannot pass over to the replica daughter cell. I'm a philosopher not a scientist, can anyone out there please help to relate this to relevant asymmetrical electromagnetic first principle logic? Immanuel Kant predicted ethic asymmetrical electromagnetic (inner (stereoscopic) vision existing within the creative artistic mind.