Re: Potentially stupid question about AC

[CUTblakeney@home.com (Jeff Blakeney)]

On 23 Aug 1999 04:24:53 GMT, supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:

>Excess positive charge, right?  Electrons are negatively
>charged by defitintion (protons are positively charged)
>so I take it the ground must be positively charged if it is
>happy to take more electrons.

There are two ways to discuss the direction of the flow of
electricity.

1) Conventional flow
This method assumes that something with a negative charage doesn't
have enough electrons and something with a positive charge has too
many electrons.

Therefore, when connected in a circuit the electrons flow from the
positive pole to negative pole.

2) Electron flow
This is what you are talking about above.  In this case, material with
less electrons gets a stronger positive charge and material with
excess electrons gets a stronger negative charge.

This means that the electrons flow from the negative pole to the
positive pole.

These are the two types of electical flow I skipped over in a previous
post.  The two methods came about because of an assumption made at the
time electricity was discovered.  Electron flow is the true way things
are working but pretty much everyone (if not everyone) uses
conventional flow and we don't bother even thinking about electron
flow.

So you are correct in what you said but it is preferable to think
about the earth as having a negative charge and not a positive one.

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