I am confused. One GCSE video on YouTube says it is a flow of electrons around a circuit; while, my textbook says it is a flow of charge around a circuit, carried by electrons. Since charge can be either positive or negative, how is it only carried by electrons? I want a concrete definition that clears up my doubts.
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Perhaps related. – rob Jun 06 '22 at 03:04
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It depends if you're asking about the nature of current, or about the way it's counted.
About its nature: as @Dandan0101 said, it varies. It can be electrons in metals, electrons and holes in semiconductors, ions in liquids...
About the way it's counted: for historical reasons, electrical intensity is usually defined as the flow of positive charge. In metals, it means that the direction of current is conventionnaly opposite to the motion of the actual carriers (electrons).
Miyase
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Where does electricity move from in a circuit? Negative terminal? This image says something else. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/uploads/articles/conventional-flow-notation.jpg – Dahir Jam Jun 06 '22 at 02:55
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@DahirJam Current leaves the positive terminal and returns through the negative terminal. Equivalently, electrons leave the negative terminal and return through the positive terminal. – DanDan0101 Jun 06 '22 at 03:10
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I'm not sure what "the premise of charge" is... There are two types of charge (positive and negative), so you have two ways to define the current. It just happens that, in the past, it was decided to count as positive current the motion of positive charges. It's an awkward choice for metals (but scientists didn't know about electrons back then), and a fine choice for some other medium. – Miyase Jun 06 '22 at 18:19
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The fundamental definition of current is the flow of charge, regardless of what the charge carrier is. It happens that in most conductors, like the metals that the wires of a circuit are made out of, the charge carrier is the electron.
DanDan0101
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