Now if you weren't already confused.......

Electric currents in copper wires are a flow of electrons, but these electrons are not supplied by batteries. Generators do not 'generate' them. Instead the electrons come from the wire. In copper wire, copper atoms supply the flowing electrons. The electrons in a circuit were already there before the battery was connected. They were even there before the copper was mined and made into wires! Batteries and generators do not create these electrons, they merely pump them, and the electrons act like a pre-existing fluid which is always found within all wires. In order to understand electric circuits, we must imagine that all the wires are pre-filled with a sort of "liquid electricity."

To clarify this, get rid of the battery. Instead, use a hand-cranked generator as your power supply. Ask yourself exactly where the flowing "electricity" comes from when a generator powers a light bulb. A hand-cranked generator contains a coil and some magnets. When cranked, it takes electrons in from one terminal and simultaneously spits them out the other terminal. At the same time, the generator pushes electrons through the rotating coil of wire inside itself. It also pushes them through the rest of the circuit. So where did these electrons come from? Unlike the situation with a battery-powered circuit, all we have here is wires. Inside the generator is just more wires. Where is the source of this flowing "electricity?"


When we include the generator in the circuit, we find that the circuit is a continuous closed loop, and we can find no single place where the "electricity" originates. A generator is like a closed-loop pump, but it does not supply the substance being pumped. Batteries are like this as well. The liquid between the battery plates is an electrolyte, and electrolytes are conductors. Some batteries contain acid, others are alkaline batteries, and still others use conductive salt water. Flowing charges go through the battery, and no charges build up inside.


But weren't we all taught during grade-school that "batteries and generators create Current Electricity"? This phrase forms a serious conceptual stumbling block (at least it did for me!) To fix it, get rid of the bogus idea called "Current Electricity". Instead change the statement to read like this:

"Batteries and generators cause electric charge to flow."
To complete the picture, add this: all conductors are full of movable charge. That's what a conductor is, it's a material which contains movable charge.

A battery or generator is like your heart: it moves blood, but it does not create blood. When a generator stops, or when the metal circuit is opened, all the electrons stop where they are, and the wires remain filled with electric charges. But this isn't unexpected, because the wires were full of vast quantities of charge in the first place.