Relevant XKCD:
Title text: Sure, we could stop dictators and pandemics, but we could also make the signs on every damn diagram make sense.
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Relevant XKCD:
Title text: Sure, we could stop dictators and pandemics, but we could also make the signs on every damn diagram make sense.
test: e: you can link them directly
Well obviously the robots would be good instead of evil that way
Right, like the guy with the negatronic brain isn't going to be evil. Come on!
explain this one to me?
adding to abnorc's excellent answer - circuit diagrams are all drawn as if charge carriers are positive (this is called "conventional current"), but because electrons are negative, this can get very confusing when you're dealing with components where the flow of charge is one-way only (diodes, transistors, batteries, photometers...)
In Benjamin Franklin’s experiments, he came up with the convention that we use today to define a “positive” charge. As it turns out, electrons, discovered much later, are negatively charged according to the convention. Lots of chemical and physical reactions involve electrons as charge carriers, so lots of physical phenomena have this weird opposite thing going on. E.g. electric current or “conventional current” flows in the opposite direction of electron current. Chemical reactions are also weird. Reduction reactions involve a reduction in electric charge, but gaining an electron. The model works just fine, but it can be tricky and/or annoying at times.
Negatrons and Positrons would have been so much better names
What if we just assume current flows from negative to positive?
Electrons are considered positive in cars.
Oilrig