Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Models of electricity

In today's lesson, there were some discussion about the various models of electricity.

(a) The conventional current model.

(b) The electron current model.

(c) Rueven's model of displacement.

(d) Mr Tan's model of EM radiation.

Dear students, it is quite obvious that the models (a) and (b) are well established models since Primary School.

However, models (a) and (b) does not seem to explain the electrical circuit effectively.

Then Rueven came to the rescue by introducing the concept that there are already alot of electrons present in the circuit. The battery acts like an energy source that moves a 'chain' of electrons or positive charges around the circuit.

However, Mr Tan questioned that if the wires are very long, will there be a time delay in the circuit? This poses a problem for Rueven's model because that will predict that there is a time delay before the lighting up of the circuit.

For your thinking caps.

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