What is Electricity? (1996)
&gt;&quot;Well, maybe we don&#x27;t need to choose just one definition. Could we mix them? Could we let Electricity be an &quot;elastic term?&quot; Suppose we ignore all these contradictions and instead pretend that all of the above definitions are true. Below is the &quot;clear&quot; and &quot;simple&quot; description of electricity which results:<p>Electricity is quite simple: &quot;electricity&quot; is just the flowing motion of electricity! Electricity is a mysterious incomprehensible entity which is invisible and visible, both at the same time. Also, electricity is both a form of energy and a type of matter. Both. Electricity is a kind of low-frequency radio wave which is made of protons. It&#x27;s a mysterious force which cannot be seen, and yet it looks like blue-white fire that arcs across the clouds. It moves forward at the speed of light... yet it sits and vibrates inside your AC cord without flowing forwards at all. It&#x27;s totally weightless, yet it has a small weight. When electricity flows through a light bulb&#x27;s filament, it gets changed entirely into light. Yet not one bit of electricity is ever used up by the light bulb, and all the electricity flows out of the filament and back down the other wire. College textbooks are full of electricity, yet they have no electric charge! Electricity is like sound waves, no no, it&#x27;s just like wind, no, the electricity is like the air molecules. Electricity is like cars on a highway, no, the electricity is the speed of the cars, no, electricity is just like &quot;traffic waves.&quot; Electricity is a class of phenomena ...a class of phenomena which can be stored in batteries! If you want to measure a quantity of electricity, what units should you use? Why Volts of electricity, of course. And also Coulombs of electricity. And Amperes of electricity. Watts of electricity and Joules, all at the same time. Yet &quot;electricity&quot; is definitely a class of phenomena; merely a type of event. Since we can&#x27;t have an amount of an event, we can&#x27;t really measure the quantity of electricity at all... right? Right?
Heh heh.<p>Does my description above sound stupid and impossible? You&#x27;re right. It is. The word &quot;electricity&quot; has contradictory meanings, and I&#x27;m trying to show what happens when we accept more than one meaning. Electricity is not both slow and fast at the same time. It is not both visible and invisible. And electricity isn&#x27;t the flowing motion ...of electricity.<p><i>Instead, approximately ten separate things have the name &quot;electricity.&quot;</i><p>PDS: Observation: You could say that there are little pixies, little faeries dancing in the wires, instead of electrons, volts or amps, and if you did so, the electricity could still work, and no one would be any wiser...<p>What Science has done, up until now, is that they have named different aspects, different attributes of electricity, and they have mathematically defined the relationship of many but not all possibilities of these attributes under many but not all possible circumstances...<p><i>What Science has not done, to date, however, is clearly explained what electricity actually is.</i><p>In other words, we don&#x27;t have a microscope such that we can &quot;see&quot; electricity and precisely what&#x27;s going on at the atomic level (or whichever levels of scale that electricity takes place at), that is, we cannot see the exact <i>CAUSE</i>, we can only use measuring devices to measure <i>EFFECTS</i>.<p>Everything in our Science, to date, is about the <i>EFFECTS</i> generated by electricity.  But we are not one step closer to understanding it&#x27;s <i>TRUE CAUSE</i>.<p>The idea that because a chemical reaction generates electricity, or a magnet moving across a wire (or wire moving across a magent) we understand it to be the <i>CAUSE</i> of electricity -- is not true.<p>That&#x27;s because in order to get closer to understanding the <i>CAUSE</i> of electricity, <i>we have to understand what every way of generating electricity -- has in common with every other way...</i>  Do we really understand that?  Someone care to take a crack at explaining how a chemical reaction which generates electricity is like moving a magnet across a wire?  And what do those two things have in common with charging a capacitor via a Van De Graaff generator?<p>They all generate &quot;electrons&quot;?<p>No!<p>The Van De Graaff generator generates electricity via friction, the wire via induced current, and the chemical reaction, how is that in any way similar to the other two?<p>You see, we have a lot to learn, if we&#x27;re willing to remove this arbitrary all-too-convenient explanation word called the &quot;electron&quot; -- which serves as a place at which all reasoning stops...<p>The word &quot;electron&quot; in today&#x27;s science is like &quot;God&quot; in yesterday&#x27;s religions:<p>Question (to a priest of yesteryear): &quot;So if God exists then who or what created God?&quot;<p>Priest: &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, God is presumed to self-exist, and presumed to be the ultimate authority, so we don&#x27;t question that any further...&quot;<p>Question (To a scientist of today): &quot;OK, so if electrons exist and are the cause of electricity, then what are they, and how are they created?<p>Physicist: &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, electrons are presumed to self-exist, presumed to be the cause of all electricity, beyond that, we don&#x27;t question them or that they exist...&quot;<p>But what if all of these electrons, which everyone claims exist... really do not exist?<p>We could call &#x27;electrons&#x27; by other names: little pixies, little faeries, very small &quot;magical elves&quot; dancing in the wires, and it wouldn&#x27;t change the <i>EFFECTS</i> of the electricity or the electrical circuit, but it wouldn&#x27;t get us one step closer to <i>a really deep understanding</i> of what is really going on &quot;down there&quot;, the true <i>CAUSE</i>...