• Question: how does electricity flow through wires?

    Asked by sebisepic to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 18 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Melissa Brereton

      Melissa Brereton answered on 18 Mar 2013:

      Electricity is made up of lots of positive and negative ions and electrons. When these ions remove from one place to another, they form an electric current. So when we say that electricity flows through a wire, it is actually an electric current that moves and this is made up of ions moving along the length. These particles only move when there is a voltage (or difference in charge) from one side of the wire to the other. For instance if one side of the wire is positively charged, then lots of negative ions will move to that side and form a current and electricity will flow!

    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 19 Mar 2013:

      From memory, The really crazy thing about things that conduct electricity is that there are free electrons in your wire. These guys are negatively charged and bump eachother along to make the flow of electrons we call electricity. I always used to think that they whizzed around the wires but turns out they mostly just nudge eachother along, there’s so many of them that it makes a really big difference!

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