{"id":5129,"date":"2016-07-26T10:17:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/which-way-does-current-really-flow\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T18:23:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T08:23:25","slug":"which-way-does-current-really-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2016\/07\/26\/which-way-does-current-really-flow\/","title":{"rendered":"Which way does current REALLY flow?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’ve talked on the podcast about launching a worldwide campaign to require the reversal of ALL those little arrows on the symbols for transistors and diodes. You see, they are saying that electricity flows from the positive to the negative. Engineers apparently got that idea from Ben Franklin, and they are sticking with it. It is time for a change! Reverse the arrows! Down with CCF! Viva Electron Flow! Let’s tell the truth! <\/b>

<\/b> This morning Bob Crane W8SX sent me this very interesting article on this topic from Nuts and Volts: <\/b>

<\/b> http:\/\/www.nutsvolts.com\/magazine\/article\/which-way-does-current-really-flow?utm_source=Newsletter+%2332&utm_campaign=Newsletter+%2332&utm_medium=email<\/a><\/b>

<\/b> The article describes very well the origins of this controversy. (There were one or two scary moments in which I thought the author was getting ready to tell us that positive ions can move through wires and transistors (NO!) but he pulled back from the brink and clarified that he was talking about ion flow in electro-chemical batteries. Whew, that was scary!)<\/b>

<\/b> But here’s a question for the philosophers and historians of electronics: When physicists decided to label the electron as “negative” this was an arbitrary choice, right? They could have just as easily decided to call it “positive” with the protons being called “negative” right? In this case all the arrows in our diagrams would not be in need of reversal, right?<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve talked on the podcast about launching a worldwide campaign to require the reversal of ALL those little arrows on the symbols for transistors and diodes. You see, they are saying that electricity flows from the positive to the negative. Engineers apparently got that idea from Ben Franklin, and they are sticking with it. It … Continue reading “Which way does current REALLY flow?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5129"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5131,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions\/5131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}