Electric Potential Difference and Circuit Basics

[@MRSsamadi]

wow. you deserve so much recognition for the amount of people that learn from your videos. you have a crazy talent for teaching. you can understand the perspective of the student and literally clarify/answer any questions i have in my head. can't say enough how much i appreciate your videos. you almost make me want to switch my major to physics .... almost lol

[@FlippingPhysics]

Thank you so much 😀

[@kaushikdr]

I have been thinking about this as well and I have built upon this analogy to include a funnel of rocks at the top of a cliff. The reason for this is because I was thinking of the resistance as the size of the funnel hole - the bigger the hole, the less resistance, and the more current can flow!

[@mrgrotholson3246]

Great video! I also liked the cliff analogy. It fits really well both conceptually and visually. I like that you made a point to explicitly state the things that are weird (symbol/unit) and commonly different but mean the same (resistor/battery/wire/bulb symbols, lightbulb/light bulb). It is difficult to maintain the integrity of proper names without sounding long-winded and getting mentally lost in the flood of words. Within the first 1:33 the word “electric” is said 21 times. This is not a bad thing, just an unavoidable fact of using the full, proper terms. I commend you. You put the heavy hitting, listening/mental processing up front, lightened up with more visuals and small concept chunks but also kept referencing back to the heavy hitter. Nicely done!

[@FlippingPhysics]

I checked the script. Some form of the word "electric" appears 75 times. 😇 I have found that using the full, proper terms, rather than abbreviations really helps with understanding. Thank you for checking over the video!

[@phenomenalphysics3548]

I was studying electricity and magnetism I needed this

[@syntacticcave9514]

Amazing and entertaining ✌❤👌

[@rohanr5150]

You should add this to the electricity page on the website!

[@joshuawilliams3221]

Ha, irksome and unfortunate and not logical indeed! Captured that consensus/confusion in a great way. I LOVE the cliff analogy and the way you animated it, fantastic! My only comment would be that in the discussion at the end on light bulbs, would it be worth mentioning that they sometimes act like and/or are drawn as resistors? Another amazing video, and it appears you are on track to have all AP 1 topics covered by the time many people (myself included) are teaching them. As always, thank you so much for all that you do! Josh

[@FlippingPhysics]

Thanks. I thought about adding something about lightbulbs sometimes being drawn as resistors and decided against it. I think it will be rather obvious when students run across that and did not want to muddle things more than they already are. Thanks for the feedback! Also, yes, I am really hoping to have all AP 1 topics covered by early April this year. 🤞 It's been a long 7 year process.

[@mrgrotholson3246]

*edit* Sorry, didn't mean to post my comment as a reply to yours.

[@uhkneerudh]

Thank you so much for all the videos they really help with my AP Physics 1 course. Are all the recent videos pertaining to electricity on the AP Physics 1 exam?

[@FlippingPhysics]

Yes. All the videos I have been making recently about electrostatics and electricity are for the AP Physics 1 curriculum. Glad you enjoy my videos!

[@MnMn-kx1sk]

hi sir, your videos are so fun they are very useful thank you for these videos.

[@0ddSavant]

This is pretty awesome. Is that middle desk farther away and lower than the others? I appreciate the physics, and the bow tie, but you’re freaking out my OCD. If you feel it appropriate, consider adding arc and flash effect like Electro Boom does so it can be a more accurate representation of what it looks like when I play with electricity.

[@abhinavmishra8923]

LOVE WITH RISPECT FROM 🇮🇳👳 SIR.....

[@FlippingPhysics]

Thank you. I hope all is well on your side of the world!

[@BeckePhysics]

The video looks good. Not that it matters, but I've taught that a single long/short line is a single cell and multiple long/short lines represent a battery of cells. Of course, we often use just a single long/short line and call that a battery. But not a big deal.

[@BeckePhysics]

Also, too late now, but with the cliff analogy, I'd represent the wires with the mass moving left/right, where the potential energy is not changing. So up the battery, sideways along the wire, down the resistor, sideways back to the bottom of the battery. Also kids then get confused when the battery is drawn on its side and the wires are vertical. So I've tried to do a topographical map thing instead of head-on -- usually a ski slope from above: up the lift, down the slopes.

[@FlippingPhysics]

Yeah, sorry. Too late now. I agree that would be a bit better, however, the video is completely done and that would take a lot of work to change.

[@questioningthoughts95]

Amazing

[@cinemastudios9199]

Love these videos! I have 2 questions. First off, what is the purpose of even having a resistor in the circuit diagram and what effect does it have when you remove in and replace it with the lightbulb as you did. Secondly, could you direct me to some helpful resources on the topics of mechanical waves and direct currents (besides your review videos) for the time being before you make a video playlist for them.

[@carultch]

Resistors can be manufactured to a much more reliable and predictable value of resistance, than light bulbs. Light bulbs (the incandescent kind), ultimately are resistors, except an extreme temperature change is involved from heating the filament from 300K to 2800K. If you were to suck the heat out of a light bulb, and keep its filament at 300 Kelvin, it would behave just like any other resistor. An ordinary resistor is designed to remain close to room temperature when running at its rated Wattage or less, so that its Ohms are nearly constant and independent of current or voltage drop. When you need to generate a specific voltage as a fraction of the supply voltage inside a circuit, you commonly would use a pair of resistors called a voltage divider. You also see resistors interacting with other circuit elements like capacitors in the design of electric filters, that enable us to selectively let through certain frequencies and block other frequencies.

[@cryptid1925]

MAN YOU ARE GREAT!!!!!!!

[@FlippingPhysics]

Thanks!

[@XxPlayMakerxX131]

Great can you cover thermal physics?

[@FlippingPhysics]

Someday, however, it is going to be quite some time.

[@riyapatel618]

I suggest u make videos for neet-jee... I promise your channel will start growing faster.

[@FlippingPhysics]

All the videos which I make are for the JEE/NEET, however, I do not get much JEE/NEET traffic. kzbin.info/aero/PLPyapQSxH6masSHm1cWUr71konxpYp4BU

[@karpagamk5562]

Hi In reality do positive charges really move ?

[@FlippingPhysics]

Please see 9:45.

[@carultch]

In any manufactured circuit made from metals as the conductors, it is negative charges (i.e. electrons) that flow. Positive charges are tightly bound in the nuclei, which themselves are bound in the crystal lattice of the solid material. The metal would lose its elemental identity if protons were to leave the atom. There are circuits which do have positive charges flowing. Human nerve cells are an example. In the human nerve cells, it is positive sodium ions that carry the current, in the direction of conventional current. Inside a battery, there are also both signs of charges flowing concurrently in the form of the ions in the electrolyte. Inside semiconductors, there is an apparent flow of positive charges called holes, although this is really a location in the crystal lattice where an electron should be. The key takeaway is, Benjamin Franklin did us a favor by making his "mistake". By having his mistake mean that current is opposite the direction of electron flow, it sets us up to be flexible with our understanding of the direction of current. It could flow with the charges, it could flow against the charges, depending on the signs of charges in question. The field effects are ultimately what matter for circuit operation, which is what the conventional current quantifies.

[@lalremruata544]

Suppose we have a battery of 6V . And I know that every 1C of charge that are present in the negative terminal possess 6j of P.E What about the electrons in the conductor? Are these electrons present in the conductor also get 6J of P.E for every 1C of charge? When it's connected with a battery.

[@carultch]

A coulomb of electrons is 6.24 quintillion electrons. Suppose we define the negative terminal of the battery as our zero line for electric potential, as is common to do. This would likely mean it is grounded to the metal housing of a device you are building, and we would call this point the ground of the circuit. A 9 V battery would mean that a coulomb of charges would have to "climb" with 9 Joules of energy added to them to get to the positive terminal, if they were positive charges. However, electrons being negative, this means they "fall" in to a "pit" that is 9 Joules below the ground for a coulomb worth of electrons. The electrons either have to find another destination of this energy, or they would add this energy to their kinetic energy. Travelling through the circuit's load, they deliver this energy to the circuit's load on their journey to the positive terminal. For an individual electron in this 9V battery, it has a potential energy of zero Joules (by definition) at the negative terminal, and -1.44*10^(-18) Joules at the positive terminal.

[@Layarion]

"good morning" you already lost me lol

[@SirPickless]

if im not mistaken it is not the electric charges or electrons which carry the energy it is the fields so, by my understanding, your comparison of the cliff and the electric potential energy is wrong. please help me understand why im wrong

[@carultch]

It still refers to the change in potential energy per unit charge, AS IF an individual charge made it through the circuit between the two points of interest. An individual charge moves extremely slowly, because there are trillions of the charges involved. Or in the case of AC, the charges never make it from source to load, because the field applied by the source and propagated among them keeps changing their flow direction. On net, an aggregate group of charges carries the same amount of energy as one charge would, even though each individual charge only moves a fraction of the way through the whole path. Unlike gravity, where the gravitational fields of common objects are negligible, the charges in a circuit contribute to defining the electric field, which is why it takes the shape of the circuit's path. It would be very difficult to get gravitationally-interacting objects to do the same.