[Today’s run: rest day]<\/p>\n
In order to be an authentic Ham Radio Guy I have over the years tried to learn more about electricity and electronics.<\/p>\n
One of the features of that study that boggles my mind is the difference between actual current flow and assumed current flow.<\/p>\n
Somewhere back in the mists of time somebody assumed that electricity flows from the positive terminal of a battery to the negative terminal.\u00a0 Isn’t that what you would expect?\u00a0 That red wire attached to the battery in your car is the positive terminal and the black wire is the negative.\u00a0 So you would think that the electricity stuff is coming out of the battery on the red wire and going back in on the black wire.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 Electrons actually are negative charges.\u00a0 The positive terminal of the battery has a positive voltage, which means that it has a need for more electrons.\u00a0 It sucks electrons like a vacuum cleaner.\u00a0 The higher the voltage the more it sucks.\u00a0 The electrons actually come out of the negative\u00a0 and go into the battery on the red, positive wire.<\/p>\n
Now here is the mind boggling part.\u00a0 The black wire just attaches to the engine block.\u00a0 And, let’s pretend you have need for more current so put another battery into your car system.\u00a0 You would attach all of the black wires to the engine block, even if the batteries are at different voltages\u00a0 (some suck more than others).\u00a0 So all of the batteries make this pool of available electrons and everything with voltage pulls in the number of electrons available in proportion to the amount it sucks.\u00a0 And they call that common-connection-of-all-black-wires the “ground”.<\/p>\n
Instead of thinking about electric circuits as a hose spurting electrons you really have to think of them like a vanilla milkshake full of electrons and someone sucking on a straw trying to get some milkshaky goodness.\u00a0\u00a0 Sucking is voltage.\u00a0 Milkshake in the straw is current.\u00a0 Small straw means harder to get much out of it: resistance.<\/p>\n
And you look at some electrical schematic and it implies, “start here, go this way” and it is all such a lie!\u00a0 The symbols for diodes and transistors even have little arrows… that point the wrong direction.\u00a0 The names are right (emitter emits, collector collects) but the symbols are wrong.<\/p>\n
I find vacuum tube circuits to be more transparent as far as depicting the actual current flow.\u00a0 But that may be because I have a little better understanding about the way current moves through a tube than through a transistor.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: rest day] In order to be an authentic Ham Radio Guy I have over the years tried to learn more about electricity and electronics. One of the features of that study that boggles my mind is the difference between actual current flow and assumed current flow. Somewhere back in the mists of time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}