The Big Misconception About Electricity

Well well well, stepping into my territory, eh?! I shall make a video about this!!

I’m so glad this video exists. I use to completely not even understand how electricity worked, and now I still don’t.

when i lived on land like a normal person, i never thought about this stuff. now that i live on a sailboat, i'm obsessed with how absolutely "normal" things work and electricity is my favorite topic because it's so MYSTERIOUS!!! i loved this video :D

I gave up learning. I burned out. But this channel has reignited my joy and love I forgot in my youth and curiosity I had for the World. Thank you sincerely Sir.

EE here; I think most of this info is technically correct, but potentially misleading in some areas. For one, while it's true that energy is transferred in the space around a conductor, as opposed to through the conductor, the vast majority of that transfer is taking place extremely close to the conductor (we're talking millimeters, typically), due to both the magnetic and electric field strengths decreasing exponentially with distance from the conductor. So in reality, the energy being transferred actually decreases superexponentially with distance from the conductor. Now, in power lines, the ground is still a concern because it's a very long conductor, carrying very high voltage, at very high currents; it's a somewhat extreme case. Yet, even though the cable is miles long, we only need to separate it from the ground by tens of meters to significantly reduce losses over that long distance. Furthermore, the ground is only a problem because power lines are AC. If they were DC, you could lay the cable right on the ground, and you wouldn't get any significant energy loss. Edit: see below, the dropoff is not actually superexponential, but the general idea that energy transfer is greater closer to the conductor is still accurate. For two, the analogy of electron flow being like water through a tube is actually still accurate in the case of the undersea transmission line. The metal rings around the cable cause a change in electrical impedance for that section of the cable. In the case of water in a tube, this would be analogous to having an air bubble trapped in your tube. As a pressure wave travels through the water, it will suddenly hit this air pocket, which is far more compressible than the water (i.e. has a different impedance), which will cause the waveform to distort in precisely the same manner as the electric wave does in the cable. Some energy will pass through the bubble, creating your distorted (attenuated) waveform, and the rest of the energy will actually become a wave reflected back in the other direction. This is precisely what's causing the distortions in the undersea transmission line. There's a bunch of reflected waves bounding back and forth between all the iron rings that stretch and distort the original signal. (for the real electrical nerds, check out "time domain reflectometry", which uses this principle to precisely detect where a fault exists on a power line) Third; yes, energy transfer from the switch to the bulb will occur in 1/c time (by the way, I think you could clarify this by representing it as d/c time, where d is distance from the switch to the bulb. You never really state where the 1 comes from in that equation (at first I thought you were implying it was a constant value, unrelated to this distance)). And yes, you do clarify that it will only be a fraction of the steady state energy. But I think you should stress that this would be an extremely small portion of that steady state energy. The initial energy that the bulb receives will only be due to the capacitive and magnetic coupling between the two long portions of the conductor. And in the case of wire separated by 1 meter, both the capacitive and magnetic coupling would be practically zero. This again is due in part to the exponentially decaying electrical and magnetic field strengths with distance from the conductor, as well as the poor electric and magnetic permiativity of the dielectric (air) between the conductors. Fourth; addressing your question about "why is energy transferred during one half cycle, but not returned back to the plant in the other half of the cycle", I think your physical demonstration actually explains that perfectly. No matter which end of the chain you pull, there's something down the line offering resistance to the motion of the chain. Heck, you even get friction between the chain and the tube, which is like resistance in electrical conductors. However, if you attached a sort of clock spring to your wheel (such that the spring always worked to return the wheel to its at-rest position), you would indeed see some energy returned to the power plant (you) on the second half of the cycle. This is analogous to powering a capacitive load with AC.

And here I thought all vectors were pointing.

so.. in summary - it's the making of the connection, from your appliance to the power plant, that then causes an energy field around the wire itself (near instantaneously) that causes the device to turn on. This actually makes far more sense, basically once connected the wire is 'live' .. there is no 'flow' back and forth, so to speak, the dissipation of energy around the wire and either end is the source of the electricity. (something like that). This also agrees with my understanding of EMI (electro magnetic interference) from electronics (disrupting things like wifi signals) from working in tech. Thanks for the video, well explained as always!

Watched this and it blew my mind, in all my studies they talked a lot about the flow of electricity but not the flow of energy. This just made so much more sense then electrons rushing around a cable.

I feel like a baby who just realized mom and dad don’t really disappear during peek-a-boo

I teach physics at the University of California, San Diego, including this very topic. Within an hour of watching this, I set up the experiment, and got the result. I have photographs of the experimental setup, and of the oscilloscope traces. I discussed the results at length with a physics professor friend, and we agree on the explanation. In fact, the load gets (nearly) the full voltage (almost) immediately; there is no (visible) ramp-up time, nor delay through the long wires (delay < 10 ns). This is fully consistent with transmission line theory that is well established for about a century. Dr. Muller's Veritasium series is great, but in this case, there are several claims that are incorrect, or at least misleading. There are many subtleties, and I cannot do them justice in a comment. I would enjoy talking with Dr. Muller to clear these up. For reference, I have a BS in Electrical Engineering, a PhD in physics, and I am author of "Quirky Quantum Concepts", an upper-division/graduate quantum mechanics text supplement. This is my first Youtube comment ever. Update: I love the Veritasium series, and I have learned a lot from it. To respond to some replies: I chose the simplest case, which I think illustrates the point that power can reach the load without going the whole length of the "wings." The analysis link below the video covers the more-complicated case. My "wings" are 50' hardware store extension cords. My propagation test confirms that coiling them doesn't matter, as expected. My analysis is fully transient, and the circuit transits to steady-state DC over time. Resistance can safely be approximated as zero, but inductance and capacitance cannot, as expected by theory. My load is 270 ohm, roughly the on-resistance of a 50 W incandescent bulb. The characteristic impedance Z ~53 ohm, which is substantially less than the load; that's what's needed for the simple case of near full response nearly immediately (the load is not matched to Z). In this case, the wing capacitance dominates the behavior. Consolidating my previous reply: Examples of subtleties: Do two electrons repel each other? (a) Most people would say yes, and I agree. But one could argue (b) No, one electron creates an electric field, and that field pushes on the other electron. This is also correct; it's slightly more detailed, and from a somewhat different viewpoint, but (a) is still correct, as well. But (c) In calculating the force of (b), we use only the E-field from one electron, even though we know both produce E-fields. To use the full E-field, we have to compute force with the Maxwell stress tensor; this is also correct. There are multiple correct views one can take. The video's chain analogy is very good, and correct. Separately, a few replies have hit on the most-direct (IMO) explanation: the capacitance in the wires provides an immediate, physically short path for the electricity to reach the load. The path of current changes over time. Your gut might tell you that the capacitance is too small, but a quantitative transient analysis using standard circuit theory matches the experiment. Special Relativity still stands. More subtleties: characteristic impedance, etc. I do similar demonstrations in class, so I happen to have all the equipment and experience ready to go.

Most intuitive explanation I've heard: Put down 3 coins next to each other, barely touching edge on edge, and firmly hold the 2nd (middle) one down with your finger. Smash the 1st one into the 2nd. The 3nd one will bounce away. This is how force is transferred without any noticeable movement. Same with electrons, but the electromagnetic fields are doing all the work.

WOW, as a student major in physics, that is still amazing to me.

After watching this video I can confidently say I understand less about how electricity works than I did before.

I'm 66 years old. As a child, we lived near large transmission lines in a rural area of CA. They passed over one of our pastures. We had a small water pump shed near the base of one of the towers. I "helped" my dad bury the power wires to the pump shed, 400 ft. from our barn/shop when he was installing a new pump. My dad used pipe strapping tape to mount some fluorescent tubes inside and outside of the shed. Everynight the lights were always on and I asked him why. He took me out to the shed, and asked me if I felt anyything... I realized that the hairs on my arms felt tingly, and I felt something in my ears. He explained about how such high voltage cables as above "induce" a magnetic field way around the big cables, that's what gives me the feelings, and what makes the tubes glow like they were wired to something. That had to have been 1960 /61- as I had just started 1st grade. He drew some sketches to show how "he thought" it worked. He gave me a basic electricity book and quizzed me every once in awhile. His sketches looked just like your graphics. I guess my dad WAS a lot smarter when I was younger. LOL

Finally!! I've been looking for such a video for a long time. Clear and well presented, thank you!

After having done my masters in Electronics and Communication, from NIT Rourkela,India. Why did I start thinking exactly what is explained in this video.....!! I am glad that this video exists and recommended to me by YouTube. Thank you..!!

Of course I find this video now… around 6 months ago I got into a small debate with my electrical engineering professor over a topic very similar to this. Everyone in the class seemed to be on the professors side which I guess makes sense but then the following week our professor walks into class and tells me he thought about what I was asking and had looked into it. He walked up to the board and showed some of the similar stuff you did in this video and proclaimed I had actually been correct and my original question that countered his previous discussion he admitted to the class he was in fact wrong. This was the first time in my life I had such a crystallized idea of what someone that was truly intelligent acted like. He wasn’t upset, frustrated or hurt that his initial statement was wrong because he didn’t care about being right, he cared about the truth. I know it sounds corny to say seeing someone look for confirmation instead of affirmation changed my outlook on life but it really did. Never before had I seen some so openly question their very own view and search for the truth rather than search for what backs up their view or idea. Great video, as always

WOW! I'm 80 years old. Started learning electronics in the Army in 1959. We were taught the "Right Hand Rule" in the study of inductors and transformers. Although we knew about the magnetic field around conductors we never applied that knowledge like this. Thank you for teaching an old man a new trick.

I love this video. It answers many questions about magnetism. My comment is: When you cut across a conductor that has a black and white conductor and is conducting both fields, and create a short circuit, the power is interrupted within both pathways with a dramatic display of energy. My conclusion is: The two fields are not seperate entities but are one emmanation. It would be awesome to see another video that explains the short circuit and the interruption.

Had I thought about it more than a half second, I would have gotten it right, but for the wrong reason. 😂 I answered D. None of the above, believing the light to come on nearly instantaneously, but C. 1/c IS nearly instantaneously. I, too, was taught(and very much under the impression) that it was the movement of the electrons that "powered" the device, so that it doesn't matter how many you have stacked in line, the moment you push/pull the first, the movement travelled through each one instantaneously. I'm glad that I now know how electricity is actually transferred! Thank you!