Electrons and hole flow

On the macrophysical level, you walk along the street displacing air (leaving a hole). The air comes in to fill the hole. You move one way, the 'hole' moves the other - but in this case, the hole gets filled in and you don't .

I don't think you have to worry about anything bigger than "electron/hole pairs" for now.

I may be well out of order (in which case someone in CR4 will surely soon correct me). But then again, you may be asking one of those questions which shake the earth.

Whichever, don't fret about it too much for the time being.

John is right, in a way, I would say. As you walk down the street there are 'holes' filled with air on all sides of you, in fact everywhere that is no matter there are holes.

Perhaps a better analogy as to how electricity moves is to to picture chairs all round the rooms walls, with all chairs occupied except one. If one person at a time shifts one place to the right into the empty chair, individual people will slowly circulate around the room, while the empty place will rather rapidly 'move' in the opposite direction around the room. In reality, it's only people and some air that moved.

You are a remarkably articulate eight grader.

Ordinarily, we don't think of the space behind an object as a "hole" in quite the same sense as we think of holes in electron flow. The hole behind a person walking fills in on a continuous basis with trillions upon trillions of particles involved, moving in quite turbulent flow. Certainly, the air that flows in behind a person walking has mass, and you'd expect it to carry some charge (varying from point to point, and averaging to so low a value you'd have a hard time measuring it).

For the time being, I'd suggest simply accepting the hole explanation as being more or less unique to semiconductor electron flow. I am not an electrical engineer, but I've designed and built some crude amplifiers and some other semiconductor circuits, and find that in practice, thoughts of electrons and holes rarely come up. You will be more concerned with the effect of billions of electrons flowing more or less at once, and will be concerned with micro amps and milliamps, rather than with the path of specific electrons. An EE may say I'm all wet however.

An explanation I like for electron flow is here:

http://amasci.com/amateur/transis.html

Good Job,

I don't know if there's any mass, but there must be charge as its positive flux attracts the next electron.

At 51, it does my heart good to see youth seeking knowledge. We need more kids like you.

Again, this is not an area of concern for now, but the effective feature that makes the concept of holes worthwhile is that they behave as if they have positive mass and positive charge. This is also where the analogy of moving chairs and displaced air (described above) both break down.

Hi

I am sure that by now you have caught the idea. BUT, don't let them confuse you with the facts: You really have no holes! One spot in more negatively or positively charged than the other. For the sake of discussion only: if you move fast enough through the street, you WILL create a hole (or, vacuum) behind your back means the air will have some delay in filling the "hole" you made by moving forward,. Formula 1 racing drivers use this phenomena, driving behind another car to gain speed. It will not happen in electron movement as they travel in a constant speed. Not completely true but good enough for the moment.

Wangito.

When an electrical gradien exists (P.D.) potential difference electrons get pulled out leaving what we call a "hole" behind so what is happening is that the electron is being ripped out by the force of the electrostatic field and where it has been then leaves a space we then asign this as "a positive" and where the electron has gone to as "a negative" potential. Current only flows while the potential difference allows and a circuit exists. A battery has a potential differnce across it's terminals but no current can flow until a load is applied.

Now to your real question, this is a false idea because when an object moves from one place to another here on earth, the air surrounding us clings to us and adjusts to our position in such a fluid way that no hole is ever created. A space is made but this is a different thing. When you get ot of bed in the moning you do not leave behind a hole that you will refill later the bed clothes just adjust to accomodate and you leave behind the same bed just without your mass being their.