The Big Misconception About Electricity

I’m so glad this video exists. I use to completely not even understand how electricity worked, and now I still don’t.

I'm an electrician from the UK. This can be proven by holding a florescent tube near a power line. It will glow. My family didn't believe me so I showed them. So glad you explained this in a way they understands fully. Thankyou. Very clever.

Is it possible to encase the copper wire with a shield that would almost completely inhibit the magnetic field and (nearly) completely prevent current flow? If so, it would definitively prove this concept.

I love the animations. They really help to easily visualize complex topics.

I remember learning about this at university, and I was astonished that I had never heard of it anywhere else. It is perhaps one of the most interesting ideas in physics.

After watching this video I can confidently say I understand less about how electricity works than I did before.

I kind of wish this kept going and explained how this relates to voltage, current, and resistance.

Great video, and a perfect example of how our scientific discoveries actually happen. Once we are clever enough to get something working, we make up all kinds of BS about how it works and why it works and "what's really happening", then we go through decades and centuries disproving and rewriting the how and why, while all along it continues working. In college I heard three different claims on how basic electrical current works, and regardless of the arguments and contradictions, the fact is the electrical parts work just fine regardless of what you believe is happening. One professor pointed out that you can use the same calculations even for what's not really happening, and it works just fine. Funny and interesting stuff.

It does make sense considering. I always wondered if that is the reason why as part of a IT class a few years back they mentioned not running a cable next to fluorescent lights, because it could cause interference.

I took two classes with professor Hunt at UT back in the 90’s - I recognized his laugh immediately. Fascinating to see him here.

EE here; I think most of this info is technically correct, but potentially misleading in some areas. For one, while it's true that energy is transferred in the space around a conductor, as opposed to through the conductor, the *vast* majority of that transfer is taking place *extremely* close to the conductor (we're talking millimeters, typically), due to both the magnetic and electric field strengths decreasing exponentially with distance from the conductor. So in reality, the energy being transferred actually decreases superexponentially with distance from the conductor. Now, in power lines, the ground is still a concern because it's a very long conductor, carrying very high voltage, at very high currents; it's a somewhat extreme case. Yet, even though the cable is *miles* long, we only need to separate it from the ground by tens of meters to significantly reduce losses over that long distance. Furthermore, the ground is only a problem because power lines are AC. If they were DC, you could lay the cable right on the ground, and you wouldn't get any significant energy loss. Edit: see below, the dropoff is not actually superexponential, but the general idea that energy transfer is greater closer to the conductor is still accurate. For two, the analogy of electron flow being like water through a tube is actually still accurate in the case of the undersea transmission line. The metal rings around the cable cause a change in electrical impedance for that section of the cable. In the case of water in a tube, this would be analogous to having an air bubble trapped in your tube. As a pressure wave travels through the water, it will suddenly hit this air pocket, which is far more compressible than the water (i.e. has a different impedance), which will cause the waveform to distort in precisely the same manner as the electric wave does in the cable. Some energy will pass through the bubble, creating your distorted (attenuated) waveform, and the rest of the energy will actually become a wave reflected back in the other direction. This is precisely what's causing the distortions in the undersea transmission line. There's a bunch of reflected waves bounding back and forth between all the iron rings that stretch and distort the original signal. (for the real electrical nerds, check out "time domain reflectometry", which uses this principle to precisely detect where a fault exists on a power line) Third; yes, energy transfer from the switch to the bulb will occur in 1/c time (by the way, I think you could clarify this by representing it as d/c time, where d is distance from the switch to the bulb. You never really state where the 1 comes from in that equation (at first I thought you were implying it was a constant value, unrelated to this distance)). And yes, you do clarify that it will only be a fraction of the steady state energy. But I think you should stress that this would be an *extremely* small portion of that steady state energy. The initial energy that the bulb receives will only be due to the capacitive and magnetic coupling between the two long portions of the conductor. And in the case of wire separated by 1 meter, both the capacitive and magnetic coupling would be practically zero. This again is due in part to the exponentially decaying electrical and magnetic field strengths with distance from the conductor, as well as the poor electric and magnetic permiativity of the dielectric (air) between the conductors. Fourth; addressing your question about "why is energy transferred during one half cycle, but not returned back to the plant in the other half of the cycle", I think your physical demonstration actually explains that perfectly. No matter which end of the chain you pull, there's something down the line offering resistance to the motion of the chain. Heck, you even get friction between the chain and the tube, which is like resistance in electrical conductors. However, if you attached a sort of clock spring to your wheel (such that the spring always worked to return the wheel to its at-rest position), you would indeed see some energy returned to the power plant (you) on the second half of the cycle. This is analogous to powering a capacitive load with AC.

Thank you Sir I also have the same question I asked many professors but not get clarified But you made it clear Thank you 😊 Do more fundamental things like this I have some questions out of which I would like to ask one question How 0 and 1 is stored in the flip flop It is Nothing but 2 cross coupled gates. Which are made up of transistor

Paused the video to thank you for the amazing content you keep pumping throughout all those years. Seeing your content feels more illegal than downloading books from pirateBay in terms of the value i get versus the price i pay for it. This is what education should be like. A huge thank you from an aspiring creator living in a small city near Athens, Greece. You will always be one of the first channels that pops to mind when someone asks ''How can you get valuable insights and knowledge from watching youtube?''

I learned a little about this topic in Marine Mechanics School. Talking about a/c to d/c power distribution and the intricacies of how it gets delivered. And how energy flows from negative to positive. Coils, magnets, and motion. Crests and Valleys. Pretty interesting stuff. Cool video. Thanks.

So my question now is how do those electrical and magnetic fields work in something like a motherboard or a CPU? The routes of copper in those are very close together, especially in a CPU die. Does the fibreglass in PCBs or the silicon in the wafer die stop the fields from affecting each other? Or are the fields tiny enough that they would never get close together in the first place?

My grandmother lived on a very remote and isolated island in Norway. When they first got electricity, they had one lightbulb connection hanging from the ceiling in the best living-room (it was only used when having fine visitors). The thing was that when the electrician first lay out the cables, they had no bulb to put in the socket. Also the electricity was not yet connected to the house but would be soon. So each night they put a bucket under the empty socket just in case the electricity would be connected while they was sleeping. Not to spill anything on the floor.

In addition, not shown in the video, there’s also a significant component of magnetic field circulating around the current, separate from the radiating waves. Combined with the electric field in the wire, *that* ExB Poynting vector sends energy *into* the wire, which is why the wires heat up.

Thanks for this work. These days fuel cells are becoming more popular. I have been trying to apply what you said in this video to how energy flows in a fuel cell application. I read that in a PEM fuel cell, as Hydrogen enters the anode, simply put, it is divided into H ions and electrons. The H ions go through the membrane to the cathode. The electrons can not go through the membrane so they have to flow on a wire connecting the anode to an energy consuming device and then on another wire to the cathode where they will recombine with the H ions , separated earlier , and the Oxygen from the air intake to form water as exhaust. In this case matter , H2, is consumed to make energy. And apparently, parts of the matter itself flow to make energy. If it is not too much to ask, I would like your help to understand how your thinking about traveling electromagnetic field and electrons work in this scenario. Your explanation will be appreciate tremendously. Sincerely

Darrick helping us by replacing a sensible way to understand electricity with one he doesn’t adequately explain and leaves us all confused. But I now understand that electricity can jump between to close circuits. Revolutionary. Dope.

Very interesting,I was taught that current flowed like a gas cloud of electron trough the the surface of the wire(conductive material)

I am a lowly aircraft electrical technician and mechanic. But from troubleshooting aircraft systems over the years, a fuzzy picture started to form in my head almost exactly like what you illustrated. And I've used that image to do mental checks in my head against where power is going, and if my diagnostics are correct or I have my test equipment in the wrong place. This video completed the puzzle in my head, and I think a lot of people in the blue collar world who work with electrical systems every day without ever defining the knowledge they've learned from it will appreciate seeing this video.

I'm still trying to process this. If the electricity is traveling through the fields around the conductor, when then do we only get shocked when we touch the cables? Is it because the energy we are working with is so weak, the fields are hardly noticeable? Electricity has always confounded me. (Edit) So going back to the intro question, what if you move that light bulb out to max distance from the source? Does that change the speed?

That was very educational and well done, thank you!

Well, it's a little controversial, because in maxwell's equations, especifically the fourth, he introduce the concept of displacement current, refers a flow of energy due a variation in electric and magnetic field in a capacitor (this concept was introduced for completing the amper's law called amper-maxwell equation). It means, in a simple circuit like show in the video, if you introduce in series a capacitor, the flow of energy continuous but it depends on if the source is a direct o alternating current. What is that means? the flow of energy occurs if the magnetic and electric fields are variables, for that reason, there are not electrons moving around the circuit (that model tells you, the electrons don't jump from one plate to another). the same happens, in transformers, variables magnetic field induced variables electric fields and then a current appear. 😃 Energy travels in conductors.

After 5 years of electrical engineering, I now understand electricity a tiny bit better!

It's pretty easy to test this. Just take a 100m length of 50 Ohm coax cable arranged in a big loop with the ends 1m apart, connect a 50 Ohm pulse generator to one end and a 50 Ohm resistor across the other end. Use an oscilloscope with two matched probes to see how long it takes for the voltage to arrive at the resistor. If it makes you happier you can put an LED in series with the resistor and cal it a light bulb. The result will be about 0.5 microseconds and not 3 nanoseconds. Of course I know I'm talking to myself, there's no way Veritasium can read 30,000 comments.

Yea.. I always thought it was the water through the hose analogy as well. I think your example of this may make more sense to people if you had a tool capable of gauging the electrical energy at a point in mid-air. I mean, if what you say is correct, then such a tool would have a heightened energy reading while it's sensor is near an electric wire. In theory that is, I'm not a scientist myself.

Thank you for this video. I previously thought I didn't quite get how electricity works. Now I am sure I have no idea how electricity works.

As an electrician and electronics hobbyist I heard about the "skin effect" increasing with the frequency of the source and that the inner core of the wire becomes useless with ac. If I understood this brilliant video right, we also have a skin effect on DC?

Thanks for letting us know that the wire spacing was not to scale. That was helpful!

It's great to see the Poynting flow argument reaching such a large audience! I always cover this in my college E&M classes. But I have to say that the claim that the light bulb turns on right away is pretty misleading. Consider the case where the circuit is actually open -- somebody cut the wire 300km away. By causality, the light bulb's behavior is identical in both cases (closed and open circuit) for t

When I was studying this, I would imagine lines of flux being extended and refracted through and around the wire when being cut by it. Much like watching refraction in a glass rod while waving it around in front of vertical blinds.

As someone who has worked with electricity and electronics most of my life, I have a hard time wrapping my head around this. The conventional wisdom of current flow has kept me alive all these years and the only interaction I've felt regarding fields of any type has been hairs on my arm standing up. I don't dispute the original experiment results, and I would probably buy this as a neophyte exposed to the purely academic argument, but as an experienced tradesman, I have serious doubts. As a single practical question, how is it that I can sometimes physically hear a 60hz buzz on an AC transmission line if the current is barely moving?

Thanks for the video. If we stand under the wire which inside a current flows, are we influence by the Poynting vector? Is it something additional to or the same as the magnetic field by Ampere's law?

Thank you so much... I have some basic questions about electricity for years, like how can AC have a hot side if the push pull is constantly changing. You have helped me to understand this in more ways than anyone else. BUT, how can electrical current kill or throw you if there is no flow; how does the magnetic field do the harm?

This actually raises more questions than it answers.

I wish my teachers focused more on understanding and less on social engineering, thank you sir, I proudly call you a real teacher and bringer of the truth!

I was in a team writing about electricity. We looked at "What is electricity"? We found the answer depended on who you asked. The electricians said the flow of electrons. The engineers said the flow of charge. The wave guide people said the flow of electric/magnetic fields. We know electrons store energy by moving to higher orbits. Do electrons store and release energy and transmit it to other atoms by radio wave? Do electrons move back and forth like a conga line reversing direction? If so how much mass is shunted back and forth along a transmission line and why doesn't the line wobble at a resonant frequency. (they do hum, that's why the AC frequency is below human ear sensitivity) We decided to describe electricity as the movement of charge with drifting free electrons slowly along for the ride. The charge moves because of entropy. The moving charge manifests as electric/magnetic fields. We agreed the real answer was in the relm of the particle physicists and as we were not teaching physics students our description would offend the least number of people. The short answer was "electricity is energy channeled by wires. I still don't know if a charged capacitor has one heavy plate and one light plate. Do you? T

There could theoretically could be a continous wire from the power plant to your house if it outputted 120/240 V or if you had your own generator

Love this video. Very intriguing. Thanks for putting this out for discussion. One thing, though, that I don't understand is the answer you give of 1/c s. I think this is incorrect, and should be written as 1m/c so that the dimensional analysis creates an answer of (1/300,000,000) seconds. If dimensional analysis is performed on 1/c s, the answer is in seconds squared divided by meters, which doesn't make any sense. Am I missing something?

Oh yes, please do an experiment in the Mojave desert! Also let's check a few more variations: 1. arrange the circuit in a circle - that way the shortest path through space would be the diameter 2. enclose stuff in a Faraday cage to block the fields from taking a shortcut and see if it lengthens the time to light up the bulb

Dumb question from a biology major who never "got" electricity in high school: If the energy flows through the field, not through the wires, then why does the lightbulb need to be connected to the circuit at all? Couldn't it just be next to the circuit, and still work?

If one was able to dampen the electromagnetic waves from traveling around a power line, would that thus mean no electrical current would be transferred? I mean if you could shield the cable somehow from allowing these waves from extending outside of the cable itself.

Since electrons flow from high potential (negative) to low potential (positive) with the delta potential as a voltage, is it dangerous to touch the positive side of a DC circuit since it has a low potential and thus doesn’t push electrons out towards you?

What a great topic. In school you never thought about this stuff and just excepted what was told. Great video, great channel. Best regards from germany.

The fundamental law of physics: electricity disappear if you stop paying bills.

Thank you. I m wondering of this since I m 12. I m almost 40 now and I finally got the answer. To be honest i would not be able to understand it if it was not explained like you did.

Would be interesting to see how he explains electrical conductivity and semiconductivity with his theory. Especially when it comes to doping semiconductors to make p-type and n-type semiconductors. The presented theory is not thought through.

I assume this is why clamp meters can measure the flow of energy along a wire without touching it. This includes voltage and amperage. It would have been good if resistance were explained in terms of fields.

I have to admit a lot of what was said went over my remaining few brain cells, but I did have an "ah-ha" moment. Stats tell us that suicides from people living close to powerlines are significantly higher than those who did not. I remember reading one of Lyall Watson's books where he described hamsters and rats moving their young from one side of a cage to the farthest point away from an electrical current. It seems the rodents felt the energy around the powerlines, and fearing it, did what they could to protect their offspring by moving them away. I mean, after all, even us humans can hear the energy around the powerlines when we stand underneath them. Great topic--thanks for sharing. Oh, and my choice was E, none of the above. It was a wild guess, influenced mainly by my own experience of "All the above" or "None of the above" often being the correct answer.

I'm 66 years old. As a child, we lived near large transmission lines in a rural area of CA. They passed over one of our pastures. We had a small water pump shed near the base of one of the towers. I "helped" my dad bury the power wires to the pump shed, 400 ft. from our barn/shop when he was installing a new pump. My dad used pipe strapping tape to mount some fluorescent tubes inside and outside of the shed. Everynight the lights were always on and I asked him why. He took me out to the shed, and asked me if I felt anyything... I realized that the hairs on my arms felt tingly, and I felt something in my ears. He explained about how such high voltage cables as above "induce" a magnetic field way around the big cables, that's what gives me the feelings, and what makes the tubes glow like they were wired to something. That had to have been 1960 /61- as I had just started 1st grade. He drew some sketches to show how "he thought" it worked. He gave me a basic electricity book and quizzed me every once in awhile. His sketches looked just like your graphics. I guess my dad WAS a lot smarter when I was younger. LOL

Makes a lot of sense. Someone tried to explain the electricity to me with the water in pipes analogy and it just never made sense. This makes it perfectly clear, much appreciated!!

I have 3 questions: 1. If light is electromagnetic field, doesn’t that mean it can be distorted by a magnet? 2. What is the diameter of the electric and magnetic field around the wire? 3. If the light bulb is too close to the battery and the wires are connected to another device and not the bulb, would the bulb turn on by the field?

I believe the misleading part is where he says the fraction of energy immediately reaching the bulb depends on the impedances. It rather depends on the distance between the switch and the bulb because the disturbance in the switch is generating the short term EM wave

I will guess: E. I'm guessing that the EMF (electro magnetic force already in the wire is like water in a pipe. When you turn on the water, you get what is already in the pipe. So as soon a current is introduced (which is a positive attraction, suction/vacuum so to speak), the draw of electron's EMF is immediate. That's my guess.

Derek is somewhat right about the time being roughly 1m/c for the bulb to light up but only because the parameters of the problem were picked to be tricky (sometimes fun and educative). Unfortunately Derek doesn't go into details in the video and only says that the bulb "won't receive the entire voltage of the battery immediately". This may mislead you into thinking that the signal speed in an electric circuit depends not on the length of wires but on the air distance to the switch, which is wrong. The signal speed in wires is roughly 50-95% of the speed of light and most often is what dictates how long it takes for something to turn on in most circuits. This is why, for example, matching copper trace lengths in PCBs is often important. Or why high frequency trading companies care about their internet cable lengths. HOWEVER, often in circuits there's significant wireless EM radiation, intentional (radio, wifi, microwave) or unintentional (reduced with EM shielding). Turns out that in Derek's circuit one side of the wire initially acts roughly like an antenna while the other acts like a receiver and the power transmitted could be enough to light up an LED bulb. At 100m it wouldn't.

This makes a lot of sense. But if the energy is actually being transferred through the magnetic fields then why doesn't a lightbulb light up that is near the original bulb but not touching the lines? There has to be electrical contact with the current, correct? Or does there?

So glad youtube recommended this video just yesterday I was studying Moving Charges this helped me greatly

Seems to be there's a problem with this thought experiment. You say that the bulb will light up in a couple of nanoseconds (the propagation time across the one-meter separation between the switch and the bulb). But what if there was another switch at one of the ends, one light-second away. If that switch is open then the bulb will surely never light up. So in effect, the main switch near the bulb is a way of determining the state of the switch at the end. I.e., one bit of information conveyed faster than light, as the bulb would light up in just a couple nanoseconds (or not) revealing the state of a switch one light-second away.

You've got me confused, I think you might have introduced the magnetic coupling in a transformer for clarity about why power from generators doesn't actually reach your house. It reaches the transformer and the coupled transformer coils carry power to your house.

I think one of the most difficult things about the Poynting vector is to visualise the cross product in your mind. That video with all fields represented in space is extremely helpful and should be shown in EM courses.

This video really made me think hard about energy in general. I love this video.

I am struggling through a book called Quantum - a guide for the perplexed by Jim Al Khalili. 2003. (This is readily available to purchase cheaply on the Internet). I did not study maths and physics at uni so the equations are beyond me but I am slowly coming to understand the basic concepts of this most amazing subject. I am particularly interested in the investigation of quantum gravity which is still a mystery. I have only watched your video once so have not yet grasped the full implication of what you are saying but I feel it is related to quantum physics. Thank you for your most interesting lecture. Before I watched it I just assumed electricity flowed down the wires like water in a pipe. I’m going to watch it again and again until I understand I think. I hope!

The perfect example was AC versus DC DC cables absorbed the magnetism making them unusual for long distance and the massive size of the cables or AC different concept moving electrons back and forth lowering the copper to be more efficient in the use of moving electrons.

The next time you hear someone talking about electricity going "through" wires, ask them how the internet goes through fiber optic cables! Then research undersea cables, and ask yourself, "If our internet comes to us through cables, then why do we need satellites?" And, "If your ground position is triangulated between the cellular towers, and we have towers in the first place, then why do we need satellites?"

So, viewing the energy transfer as field and flux makes a lot of sense, but how does resistance actually draw power out of the field? Does putting an additional resistor in a circuit warp the field? What about resistance in the line? Really cool stuff, I think you're gunna need a follow up video that deals with the details and minutia.

Hi, can you make a vdo explaining how cross product(especially the direction of a cross product) actually works, and how scientists discovered it, as in how they found out that this is the direction of our resultant vector(which we got as a cross product). Like for example: in torque

Hello, I believe that veritasium could enrich the theoretical framework that explains the difference between understanding electricity as a field or as a current of charges, adding that the standard model of physics, is a quantum field theory, which to explain the fundamental forces (strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces) and particle interaction, the concept of force-field carrier particles or mediating particles is used, therefore each type of particle, in this case the electron, when interacting with another electron or with itselfs, is through photons, in that sense, the gluons are carriers or mediators of the strong nuclear interaction and the W and Z bosons mediate the weak interaction. Feyman diagrams are a very didactic way of understanding the interaction between electrons at this level, further study of the complete topic is by referring to quantum electrodynamics. Now, answering the question of whether there is a "push", the photoelectric effect would show us that when we irradiate a metal plate at a specific threshold of the electromagnetic spectrum, there would be an emission of electrons, however this is explained by the increase in the kinetic energy of the electron due to the transfer of energy by the photon, which would be complemented by the Compton effect which establishes that the wavelength of a photon increases when it interacts with an electron and loses part of its energy, respecting the conservation of energy and momentum, being able to calculate the emission angle of the photon. It should not be interpreted as a collision, since it does not apply to particles without mass and at least from this view, a particle would be understood as the minimum excitation of a field, therefore a particle can be originated through the correct excitation of a field, as it was when the Higgs boson was known through stimulation of the Higgs field Does this mean there is a "push"? no The electrons are not traveling or moving around the conductor wire, they would be tied to their constituent atomic nucleus, transferring energy to each other through mediator particles. The mediator particle of the electrons in the phenomenon of electricity would be the virtual photons, and in fact, with the experiments that prove the Casimir effect, virtual photons in the vacuum have been converted into real photons, due to excitations of the electromagnetic field, as of all the other fundamental fields, the minimal perturbation in a field would correspond to an elementary particle.

I just love this guy. Well the first assumption is that the positive pole doesn’t really do anything but receiving electrons from the negative end thus disregarding the positive pole completely. The charge is in the negative pole with electrons and due to the electron binding in metals they start bouncing the electrons that are situated like on a China checkers. How long would it take for this accumulated momentum to turn out in the other end of the cable? I heard that it travels with the speed of light but I’m not sure. I will still say one second like the speed of light.

My basic understanding is wrong. Mind blown! Always learning! Thanks for the video!

WOW! I'm 80 years old. Started learning electronics in the Army in 1959. We were taught the "Right Hand Rule" in the study of inductors and transformers. Although we knew about the magnetic field around conductors we never applied that knowledge like this. Thank you for teaching an old man a new trick.

Interesting. In a chemical reaction such as a battery, electrons are moved changing the chemicals while releasing energy. When the electrons move from an outer orbit inward, they release the energy that was keeping them there. In a capacitor, electrons are collected on the negative side until they have a path out.

Now I understand less than before, thank you for making a simple circuit so complicated and plain boring.

I am with you on this, and I think this is the correct explanation. this proves tesla was on to something to create a system in which we don't need wires to travel the electricity. " A world without wires"

I was pondering for a long time on the question of self induction.. it is established that the momentum lost by charges are being gained by it's field.. and there arises the question of back emf due to the stationary conductor and changing flux.. every one and every literature out there have one answer- nature abhors change.. but none seems to explain the pathways of momentum between filed and moving charge, causing this prevention of "change"..

If physically possible, I would like to see a video in which a disturbance in the field interrupts the light from switching on/off regardless of a wire moving electrons. I believe it can serve as an amazing example of how the energy is stopped or negated through the air rather than through the wire (:

Well i guess I've been doing it wrong all these years, but it worked. I still think of current like water in a pipe except that voltage is a "negative" pressure causing electrons to flow from negative to positive potential. The electrons are similar to a train on a track. As soon as motion starts on one end, you see it on the other instantly. Not taking into account compression or anything mechanical to cause delay. I'm not saying electrons carry energy, but create a magnetic field around the wire when they are moving. The electrons don't have to travel all the way to the house. They make a loop in the transformer and return to the power station. The current in the transformer creates a magnetic field that induces current in the secondary winding of the transformer and that current or electrons travel to the home and return to the secondary winding. There is a delay in voltage in the coil hence the induction motor. If electrons are moving so slowly then how does a lightning bolt move so fast?

To know this matter with more context and a lot more history, "shock and awe : the history of electricity" is a very good documentary to get you into this subject

Brilliant. Had no idea. I love to learn new stuff! ❤️🤘

What about connecting a bulb with a coaxial cable which has both positive and negative parts together? In this case, the energy goes inside the cable, according to Gauss law (for analysis of electric field) and Ampere law (magnetic field). The time in this case would be relative to the length of the cable, I suppose.

That's a great video about power transmission! I remember being surprised by that in the university. I really don't like the 1/c answer, though. While it's technically true that there will be some voltage on the lightbulb after 1/c simply because the electromagnetic fields generated around the wire will reach it, but it has nothing to do with them being connected by wires. In the same way, you can say that turning on this battery will "turn on" every single lightbulb on the planet. This is also technically true, because there will be some field generated by the battery in the entire space, and it will induce some voltage everywhere. Although its value will be negligibly small, as the magnitude of fields around the wire quickly drop with the distance from it. Only after 1 second, the proper connection through the electromagnetic mode of the wire will be established. If you replace the wire with an ideal coaxial cable (which doesn't let any EM fields outside the inner space between the two conductors), the answer will always be 1 second, as there's no leakage and thus no way for the lightbulb to receive the EM energy from outside the incoming cable.

Makes me wonder if this is the idea behind raising speaker wires off the floor. Any answers if it is an improvement or not?

This is great knowledge! Thanks a bunch! 💡

Please explain the operation of vacuum tubes (especially the Cathode Ray Tube) without electron flow in the wires. They did work very well until the advent of solid-state devices.

This is interesting. I never understood how a Tesla coil could power something with no wired connection but now I can kind of see how if someone changed some variables (gross oversimplification) it could be theoretically possible

With such a long wire, how do the fields "know" where to go? How is it able to transmit energy immediately, but a disconnected lightbulb another meter away wouldn't power on? (or maybe it would?) In fact, how does current "know" to start flowing when the circuit is complete? Or what would happen if you cut the wire at one of the tips? Would the field instantly start receeding everywhere? 1/c seconds to turn off?

Every charged atom has a field. I usually only work with DC current. I understand that longer low wavelength frequency has the best results on larger conductors and higher frequency works better with skin effect. Paul McGowan did a video explaining different copper crystals and the way audio works with wire explaining this. My question is this. If energy travels through fields and not conductors then why are all the major connections with high current capacity almost exclusively made with large solid core termination with a large mass? Wouldn't it be more conductive if wire was broken up into fine strands that all had a field of their own?

Really wish you had covered insulators and how they interact with your description of how electricity works. I actually studied all of this in high school and again in college, and sadly, even for me, your explanation went too fast. Edit: come to think of it, you specified that the lines were resistance-less, but real lines do have resistance. If the electrons are just oscillating in place and the energy is being transported by the field outside the line, then how do those facts intersect with the concept of current density and the fact that a line can burst into flames if it has too much current flowing through it?

I learned a lot from this video. thank you.

We already know that passing current through a wire causes flux to develop around the wire. I guess what confuses most of us is the "PASSING CURRENT" bit. We've all taken that to mean "PUSHING ELECTRONS ALONG"

I think the best part of this video isn't just the information it presents, but also the conversation it sparks in the comments! People asking questions, people trying to understand what's being said, and even people providing counter-arguments in certain scenarios where what Derek explains doesn't seem to match up. I think having civil discussions helps a ton, thanks Derek + the Veritasium community! This video and the comment section is genuinely interesting to go through

Watching this excellent video, I couldn't help but think of a Dave Barry article... "the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact, the last year any new electricity was generated was 1937."

After watching this video. I kind of understood why Nikola Tesla thought about the idea of there being a possibility that electricity can be transmitted through frequency across the globe(Wardenclyffe Tower) in the future without having wires.

Can you make more simplified video on working of Electricity... I didn't understand much...as we were taught differently in our school...But the video has increased my curiosity in electricity... Please can you make more informative video on electricity 😄 Thank you🙏

As an electrician, I've been doing something I don't understand my entire life.

Not saying he's wrong overall, but in the specific case of coaxial cables (which are a wave guide) you can launch a pulse down the coax that travels at about 2/3 of light speed. This is easily measured with modern o-scopes. Since the undersea cable was a coaxial cable it would have functioned in the same manner. Dielectric and resistance losses were probably the biggest factor that doomed those first cables.

Ok now I understand how I got hit by electricity so far away from the point I was standing , I got this rare thing going on where I attract electricity from distance , it’s usually just a little jolt , but one time it was from a power line , it hit my head and came out from my left hand , causing sever injury throughout my entire body , I survived thanks to another genetic anomaly , called the Olympic heart ( twice the size blood chambers ) . No one could explain how the electricity left the wires , traveled through the air and looped me in , since I was standing on the side , lower than the 3 wires , one expert said for electricity to travel that distance , needs to exceed 13700 v that theses wires carry , so nothing made sense

A further comment. The author asks how long it will take FOR THE BULB TO LIGHT, which we could reasonably interpret as meaning how long it takes until the full battery voltage appears across the bulb. And he is right, that there will be a small current that flows almost instantaneously, about the time it takes for light to travel 1 meter, because each of the long loops initially looks like a resistor, of resistance value equal to the characteristic impedance of the transmission line formed by the very long pair of wires. I can't be bothered working it out, but the characteristic impedance of a couple of wires separated by a meter will be fairly high, perhaps higher than 1000 ohms, and there are 2 such "resistors" in series. So the initial, almost instantaneous current will almost certainly not be enough to light the bulb, and can be ignored. The exact behaviour over the next few seconds, until the DC current has stabilized, will be complicated, and depend on the impedance of the lines and the resistance of the bulb, and perhaps also the nature of the soil on which these transmission lines rest. But one thing is certain. Once the DC current has reached a stable value over a few tens of seconds, and the bulb is lit, it is not the steady electric and magnetic fields that transfer energy from battery to bulb, no matter what the author may believe.

I worked in Telephone Exchanges where there are thousands upon thousands of electrical circuits and most of them are bundled in the same place. Example you have a wire connecting A1 to B1 in one wire and another wire A2 to B2 and these 2 wires sit next to each other in a cable of 80 wires. According to Veritasium's theory the energy is NOT traveling in the wire but if this is the case then A1 could induce into B2 turning on the wrong load (relay for example). The only way the correct circuits are being used is if the energy is traveling on the wires. Just sayin.

It's kind of a chicken or the egg question. Photons and electron flow most certainly can be measured numerically and quantified. Battery reactions require those redox reactions. But the animation of the waves and resulting energy is top notch.