What is the Actual Theory of Electricity?

[lobe]

Ok, so i was talking to my friend about life, the universe and everything, and the conversation swung to the 'dumbing down' of school, when he told me that there are two theories of electricity. Conventional theory, which they teach you in high-school, invilving electrons moving, and Actual theory, involving electrons not moving. Now, i looked at an old test paper from a science GCSE, and at front it did say "Use Conventional theory of electricity". Now, i was wondering, what does 'actual theory' state? Are their any websites you can point me to that explains this?

Many Regards
Tom

 

[Danger]

Welcome to PF, Tom. I've never heard of either of those terms, but I've been out of school for over 30 years. Nice to see that our compliment of Douglas Adams fans is growing.

 

[robphy]

Maybe the issue concerns "conventional current" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_current#Conventional_current ).

 

[Danger]

I keep forgetting about that; it's a foreign concept to me because we were taught in high-school Electricity class that it flows from negative to positive. I think that it was Berkeman who tuned me into the positive-negative approach.

 

[LURCH]

Welcome to the Forums, Lobe!
It does sound like the old test paper was referring to conventional current or convetional flow (the idea that charge runs from positive to negative). But I tyhink your friend was reffernig to the fact that elcetrical current is not really the result of ellectrns moving from one place to another, but rather the charges of the electrons moving form atom to atom.

You see, the movement of electrons through (for example) a wire in a household circuit is very slow. This is called the "electron flow". But the current itself travels at a much greater speed as charge jumps from one atom to another.