COMMON ELECTRICITY MISCONCEPTION: Electricity is energy

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William Beaty 1999

SEE ALSO:
Direction of current
Speed of current
What is Electricity?
Electricity articles here

Many encyclopedias, dictionaries, and textbooks contain very clear

statements about the nature of Electricity. They say this:
- Electricity is a type of energy.
- Electric current is a flow of energy.
The above statements are wrong. Yes, electrical energy does exist.
However, this energy cannot be called "Electricity," since Coulombs of
electricity are very different from Joules of electromagnetic energy.
Energy and charge are two different things, so they cannot both be the
electricity. It's not too difficult to demonstrate the mistake. Below is a
collection of simple facts which show that Electricity, the stuff that flows
within copper wires, is not form of energy.
In a simple electric circuit, the electricity flows slowly in a complete
circle, while the energy moves differently. The electrical energy
flows rapidly across the circuit, going from the source to the load but
not returning. The energy does not follow the circular flow of
electricity; electricity and electrical energy are two different things.
No charges of electricity are gained or lost as the charges circulate
within the wires, yet batteries create electrical energy from chemical
energy, and light bulbs destroy[1] the electrical energy as they
convert it into light. Electrical energy takes a rapid one-way path
from battery to bulb and then leaves the circuit as light, while
electricity flows slowly around (and around and around) a
closed-loop path and none is lost.
If electricity is like water inside a pipe, that's the Hydraulic Analogy.
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AC Coupled
Comparator
Reference
Design
w/2kHz-32M
Hz Input
Frequency

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instantly to all parts of the fluid loop, while the fluid itself moves
slowly. Two things are flowing through the pipe: slow fluid and fast
energy. Electricity is like the fluid. Not like energy. Or, suppose that
electricity is like a row of billiard balls inside a tube. When you push
one billiard ball of electricity into one end, all the balls move
forward. The energy travels almost instantly along the column of
electricity-balls, while the electricity itself moves slowly. The balls
aren't made of energy. And two separate things are moving through
that tube: slow electricity and fast energy.
In incandescent bulbs, charges of electricity flow through the
filament and back out again. None are lost. This electricity enters the
light bulb through one wire, and the same amount of electricity
leaves through the other wire. Yet the energy doesn't act like this at
all; it doesn't 'flow through.' Instead the energy enters the bulb
through both wires, and the light bulb uses up the electric energy.
The electrical energy flows one-way: into the bulb, and it's all
transformed into heat and light. The electrical energy doesn't come
back out through the second wire and return to the battery. Two
things are flowing: electricity flows in a closed loop, while energy is
flowing one-way from source to load.
In an AC system, the charges of electricity move back and forth over
a distance shorter than a ten-thousandth of a millimeter. In other
words, they sit inside the wires and vibrate. That's what "Alternating
Current" or AC is all about. The electricity does not move forward at
all (if it did, that would be a direct current or "DC.") Yet while these
charges of electricity are wiggling back and forth, at the very same
time the electrical energy moves forward rapidly. Only the electricity
"alternates." The electrical energy doesn't alternate; the energy flows
continuously forwards as waves. That's the key: electricity is the
medium, while the waves in that medium are called electrical energy.
If this is confusing, consider sound waves which move through
collections of air molecules. Electricity is like the air which is
vibrating, while the electrical energy is like sound waves which fly
through the air. Sound and air are two different things, just as energy
and electricity are two different things.
Before I go too far with this, I must admit that I am playing a small trick
with words. In the above statements, I am using the word "electricity" in
the way scientists have used it since Electricity was first investigated. I am
using the word "electricity" to name the stuff that flows inside the wires;
where a quantity of electrons is a quantity of electricity, and where a flow
of electricity is called "an electric current."
Why is this a trick? It's a trick because most people use the word
"electricity" in a totally different way. They begin by defining the word
"electricity" to mean electrical energy! Electric companies do this (think of
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grades K-6. So do many dictionaries and encyclopedias. This causes

endless confusion. Physicists try to tell us that the charges of electricity are
not energy, and that a flow of charges is not a flow of energy. But then
what's an electric current? Electric currents aren't flows of energy, so
under the definition of "electricity" used by all the non-scientists, an
electric current IS NOT a flow of electricity!
Huh? Confused? You SHOULD be confused. There's something very
wrong here.
Note: my above statements about electricity and energy would be accepted
by most scientists throughout history, including Ben Franklin, Michael
Faraday, James C. Maxwell and Robert Millikan. I'm using the word
electricity in the same manner as they did: electricity is the positive and
negative "stuff" that's found in all electrons and protons. It is the
"substance" that flows along inside of the wires. When it flows, these
scientists would call it a "current of electricity." They'd say that any
charged object has a "charge of electricity," and that electrons and protons
are "particles of electricity."
Without realizing it, the electric companies and the K-6 science textbooks
are trying to re-define the original meaning of the word electricity. How
can such a thing happen? I'll examine this, but first here are more facts
about "electricity" as scientists use the word.

MORE TRUE STATEMENTS ABOUT "ELECTRICITY"

In a DC circuit, the electricity within the wires flows exceedingly
slowly; at speeds around inches per minute. At the same time, the
electrical energy flows at nearly the speed of light.
If we know the precise amount of electricity flowing per second
through a wire (the Amperes,) this tells us nothing about the amount
of energy being delivered per second into a light bulb (the Watts.)
Amperes are not Watts, an electric current is not a flow of energy;
they are two different things.
In an electric circuit, the flow of the electricity is measured in
Coulombs per second (Amperes.) The flow of energy is measured in
Joules per second (Watts.) A Coulomb is not a Joule, and there is no
way to convert from Coulombs of charge into Joules of energy, or
from Amperes to Watts. A quantity of electricity is not a quantity of
energy.
Electrical energy is electromagnetism; it is composed of an
electromagnetic field. On the other hand, the particles of electricity
(electrons) flowing within a wire have little resemblance to an
electromagnetic field. They are matter. Electricity is not energy,
instead it is a major component of everyday matter
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In an electric circuit containing coils, if we reverse the polarity of

voltage while the direction of the flowing electricity remains the
same, then the direction of the flowing energy will be reversed. So,
current same; energy-flow reversed? Yes. A flow of energy does not
follow the direction of the flowing electricity. You can know
everything about the direction of the electricity within a wire, but
this tells you nothing about the direction of the flowing electrical
energy.
In any electric circuit, the smallest particle of electrical energy is
NOT the electron. The smallest particle of energy is the "unit
quantum" of electromagnetic energy: it is the photon. Electrons are
not particles of EM energy, neither do they carry the energy as they
travel in the circuit. Electricity is 'made' of electrons and protons,
while electrical energy is electromagnetism and is 'made' of photons.
In the electric power grid, a certain amount of energy is lost because
it flys off into space. This is well understood: electrical energy is
electromagnetic waves travelling in the air, and unless the power
lines are twisted or somehow shielded, they will act as 60Hz
antennas. Waves of 60Hz electrical energy can spread outwards into
space rather than following the wires. The power lines can even
receive extra 60Hz energy from space, from magnetic storms in
Earth's magnetosphere. Electric energy is gained and lost to empty
space while the charges of electricity just sit inside the wires and
wiggle. Energy is not electricity.
In an electric circuit, electrical energy does not flow inside the
copper. Instead it flows in the empty air surrounding the wires. This
fact is hidden because we calculate the watts of energy-flow by
multiplying voltage times current. And just FYI: College-level
physics books describe a complicated, but less misleading, method of
measuring this energy-flow:
Take the vector cross-product of the E and M components
of the electromagnetic field at millions of points in a
plane penetrated by the wires. We call this the Poynting
Vector field. Add these measurements together, and this
tells us the total energy-flow (the Joules of energy which
flow each second through the plane.)
In other words, in order to discover the rate of energy-flow, don't
look at the flowing electrons. The electricity-flow tells us little.
Instead look at the electromagnetic fields which surround the wires.
How can dictionaries, encyclopedias, and textbooks make such a gigantic
error about electricity? I'm not certain, but I suspect that the mistake was
missed because it slowly crept into the books over many decades. Most
people only practice "learning" rather than "unlearning." Since we
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don't really understand electrical physics, nobody complained, or even

noticed. And if you raise the temperature of the lobster pot slowly enough,
the live lobsters won't realize that they're in trouble! (grin)
What about the experts? Why don't the science experts complain? Here's
one reason: over the years, modern scientists used the term "electricity"
less and less. Perhaps they're aware of the creeping distortion of the word
"electricity", and so they avoid using it. Instead they adopted some
improved terminology. Scientists of today don't say "charges of electricity"
anymore. Instead they call it "electric charge." Also, modern scientists no
longer say that electric current is "a flow of electricity." Instead they call it
"a flow of charge." They also say that electrons are "charge carriers" rather
than "particles of electricity." Even Faraday's Law has been changed, and
today scientists usually speak of "quantities of charge" rather than the
traditional ""quantities of electricity" discussed in the ancient definition of
Faraday's Electrolysis Law.
If today's scientists see their textbooks asserting that "electricity is
energy", they will not necessarily realize that this is an error. They will not
realize that the phrase "electricity is energy" makes the same mistake as
the following statment: "electric charge is a type of energy." Scientists no
longer use word "electricity" in their day-to-day profession, they mostly
use it when explaining physics to children. As a result, they don't
rigorously police their own usage of the word "electricity" in uncritical
situations. So they may never notice when children's textbooks get it
wrong.
Also, contemporary scientists are in the same position as anyone else: they
learned some of their terminology in elementary school, and if their books
were wrong, their minds might still retain those errors. If every one of us
learns in grade school that the charges of "electricity" are supposed to be a
form of energy, we may remain blind to the contradictions even when we
grow up to become top physicists. The scientists put the mistakes in a
mental pigeonhole and never use them during work, but they still may
bring them out when explaining electricity to non-experts. I caught myself
doing this at the start. I doubt I'm the only one with this problem.
Another reason why the error was never fixed: if an error becomes
extremely widespread, and hundreds of thousands of people begin making
the same mistake, then the error will become invisible. Those people will
refuse to even acknowledge the error as being an error. After all, this many
people can never be wrong! Oh yeah? The majority rules? Not where the
real world is concerned! It doesn't matter how many people make a factual
error: the error remains just as wrong. However, any expert who objects,
and who tries to fix the massive error, they will perhaps be seen as
grammar-nitpickers living in ivory towers. The ones who have the
ambition to point out the errors are easily ignored because they are so few.
In all the non-science school subjects, majority does rule, and any
grammar-nitpickers are actually wrong since slang becomes proper usage
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speech, then eventually those slang words will become acceptable. The
words themselves didn't change ...yet they're no longer mistakes. As the
slang is used over many years, dictionaries eventually include those words
(dictionaries RECORD definitions, they don't promote them, and the
common mistakes are recorded too.) Eventually all the dictionaries will
include the slang words, and those words will become proper English and
will be slang no longer. For this reason, people usually ignore
Grammarians who object to the "misuse" or "corruption" of the English
language. Such misuse is a matter of opinion.
But Science classes are different than English classes. In Science, reality
rules, and if a large group of non-scientists tries to change the description
of the real world, tries to define coulombs as being units of energy, then
that large group falls into error. It doesn't matter how many people "vote"
for the change, because Nature isn't listening. If "electricity" originally
means electric charge, and if people try to change it so that the word
"electricity" now means energy, then we have a special word for their
actions: MISTAKEN TERMINOLOGY.
I don't quite know how to solve the problem regarding the word
"electricity." Too many reference books contain the errors. The word has
been misused for so many decades that I am tempted to follow the lead of
the scientists: just give up! Just admit that the word Electricity is
irretrievably contaminated, and simply abandon it. Abandon it silently,
that way nobody has to be called out for public embarrassment. Yet doing
this silently has caused serious problems in the past. It doesn't fix the
problem, it just covers it up.
Abandoning the word electricity might defend Science against the braindamage caused by contradictory terminology, but it does nothing to fix all
of the reference books which are filled with confusing explanations of
"electricity." More importantly, if we quietly abandon the word
"electricity" without discussion, this will do nothing to help all of the poor
souls who are currently confused by the incorrect "electricity" concepts.
Neither will it give any aid to all of the poor science students who are
butting their heads against the contradictory material still present in their
science textbooks.

COMMENTS
WHAT IS ELECTRICITY?
ELECTRICITY MISCONCEPTIONS
ELECTRICITY ARTICLE COLLECTION
SOME MISCONCEPTION REFERENCES

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Electric theory of matter, Sir Oliver Lodge, 1904 Harper's

1906 Nobel Prize speech: Quantity of Electricity & Faraday's law
Faraday as a Discoverer, (Tyndall 1869)

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[1] Can electrical energy be created or destroyed? Certainly, just as light or sound is
created by an emitter or destroyed by an absorber. Energy itself, that's different. Energy
itself can only change form, so whenever light is absorbed by black paint, thermal energy is
created as the light is destroyed.
Here's a problem. Optical energy is called "Light," thermal energy is called "Heat" and
acoustic energy is called "Sound." Unfortunately we have no simple word that means
"Electrical energy." Nobody would complain if I said that light could be created, or that
sound could be destroyed. But if I say that light bulbs destroy "electrical energy", people
write angry letters telling me that energy can't be destroyed. But I never said that it could.
ELECTRICAL ENERGY can be destroyed just the same as optical energy can be
destroyed. This doesn't mean that energy itself can be destroyed.
We need a single word that means "electrical energy." If we can't use the word "electricity"
any more, what shall we use instead of the phrase "electromagnetic energy" or "electrical
energy?" Electrophee? Mezzelpiss? I don't know, choose something good, just as long as
you remember that a flow of charges is circular, while a flow of EM energy goes one way.

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