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The Biggest Misconception About Electricity

A 15-minute video by Veritasium about electrical signals and circuits, on the Physics shelf. It came up in 6 Reddit threads, in r/Physics, r/videos, r/codyslab, r/AskPhysics and r/engineering.

Veritasium, Video, 15 min, 2021, on the Physics shelf

Challenges the electron-delivery picture of circuit energy and introduces the electromagnetic-field perspective.

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Challenges the electron-delivery picture of circuit energy and introduces the electromagnetic-field perspective.

electrical signals and circuits

About this record

Reddit discusses and critiques parts of the electricity thought-experiment explanation. Inclusion records a technical discussion, not consensus about every simplification.

What Reddit said: 6 threads

This is an interesting video for those who haven't seen it Would also love to hear people who are more knowledgeable here give their opinion on this.

Mentioned in r/Physics. Read the thread

A few months ago Derek made a video on how electricity actually works. It received a lot of attention from engineers, physicists, and geeks on the internet, and was characterized as everything from misleading to completely wrong. In this video he revisits the claims made in that video with a new experiment done at Caltech.

Mentioned in r/videos. Read the thread

He acknowledges every criticism you have made here in both videos. Here is the timestamp from the original video where he acknowledges that the bulb would not receive the full power immediately.

Mentioned in r/videos. Read the thread

The Big Misconception About Electricity Veritasium (youtube.com/@veritasium) (I'm pretty sure Derek said the signal traveled at the speed of light, which is wrong. Too lazy to go back and check)

Mentioned in r/codyslab. Read the thread

If you haven't already, I recommend watching Veritassium's video on current. He explains and demonstrates that the current through the wire arises from electric fields which exist everywhere. In the case of the least resistance path in a medium, an internal electric field conforms to this path and dictates the movement of charges through it simultaneously, as opposed to one charge travelling a path that it decides.

Mentioned in r/AskPhysics. Read the thread

Veritasium follow-up video about electricity In november 2021, Veritasium (Derek Muller) published a video titled "The Big Misconception About Electricity" (link), where he discussed, starting from a thought experiment, how electricity works. This sparked some reactions from other youtube channels, where some technical aspects were further discussed, and a (scaled down) real-world experiment of Veritasium's thought experiment was also performed.

Posted to r/engineering. Read the thread

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