Talk:Electricity

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what is electricity

Can the article say, "No one knows what electricity is." ? Because we don't. But we can posture.

Scope of the article

OK, I don't think that the topic of this article includes all of electromagnetism. If it did we would have to merge it with electromagnetism.

I also don't think that it includes most production of visible light, the movement of an electron in an orbital is not electricity in the sense that it is normaly considered electricity. I think we're only interested in electron flow in conductors, plasmas, superconductors, and semiconductors, not electron orbitals within a single atom.

Nor, do I think the propagation of radio waves/light in free space itself part of this topic, although electricity can obviously launch and catch radio waves in transmitters and receivers.

Also, I don't think that electricity is just "electricity", a random word in the English language. I'm pretty certain that the concept of electricity is international, and not just an accident of English.

Does anyone violently disagree with any of that?Planetscared (talk) 04:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, the problem is that the word "electricity" is like "matter"-- it's not really a scientific word, but a prescientific word. I'm all for cutting it down to "Commerical applications of electromagnetism" or something, but I'm still not all that sure of which ones we'd choose. Some time ago I had to fight to get the most common use of the word electricity (as in "is your house wired for electricity?") into the lead. Do we really only want to refer to electrical energy per time that is provided commercially, by the electrical power industry by means of a connection through a conductor to an electric power station? Will electronics be part of "electricity"? The charge that runs into and out of my house, as A.C., is only a few amp-sec (coulombs), roughly the same as in a flashlight. The wiring has to be big only because the flow in both directions is counted, but the charge into and out of the house is zero over 1/60th sec -- mostly the electrons just sit and jiggle. I rent access to a potential and I buy energy -- the power company actually couldn't care less about how many electrons are used to deliver this energy (and in fact it's not that many, as noted), so long as I don't start a fire. So what is the subject of this article? Commercial electrical power? Again, perhaps we should just delete it and re-direct. SBHarris 04:52, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

To my view, electricity is certainly a scientific word, it's just that the theory isn't the current/main one, it's been subsumed. I mean were "epicycles" scientific? I would say they certainly were, and are, they made and can still make quite accurate predictions, it's just that they're not a complete or the best description. But the article on epicycles should still logically cover all about epicycles; and this article should logically cover all forms of electricity. (By cover I don't mean it should all be here, but it should all be summarised here, and link out to more complete descriptions on particular parts where appropriate, like static electricity for example.)Planetscared (talk) 17:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Basically, just because it's old science, that doesn't mean that it's not scientific, this isn't pseudoscience at all!Planetscared (talk) 17:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The word you're looking for is "obsolete". Electricity has a clear scientific definition which is no longer used in science: "electricity" is narrowly defined to mean Electric Charge, and a flow of electricity is called Electric Current. Under this obsolete usage, the Quantity of Electricity is not measured in volts, amperes, watts, or joules; it's measured only in coulombs. Today the NIST and the SI definition of units still includes Quantity of Electricity: coulombs, and it appears in the CRC handbook of Physics, but has been removed from the latest editions. In other words, if we wanted to use the scientific definition in the Wikipedia, this whole Wikipedia entry on electricity is almost completely wrong, since Electricity, (a quantity of electric charge,) is not a general class of electrical phenomena, nor is it a form of energy sold by utility companies. (For every instance of the word "electricity" throughout WP, we'd test-fit the term "Electric Charge" instead, to assure correctness! <grin!>) But fortunately this scientific usage is obsolete, and "electricity" hasn't been a scientific term in many decades. Hence we can (unscientifically and with blatant contradictions) say the following: amperes of electricity, or joules of electricity, or coulombs of electricity, or watts of electricity, or volts of electricity. Flashlights are electricity, but transistors are not (they're electronics!). Yes, electricity is a form of energy, but also it's most assuredly NOT a form of energy, while also electricity is an entire class of phenomenon. A class of phenomena cannot be stored in Leyden jars, but electric charge can, so electricity can AND cannot be stored. This because the word "electricity" has no physics definition, and it lacks any single popular usage which is free of contradictions. 208.38.200.43 (talk) 23:33, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Antiscientific statements

The above comment is full of antiscientific nonsense, and I should surely know from my bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering at top schools in the United States. This nonsense is especially pertinent in that electricity is NOT a form of energy. Also, electric current and voltage are both forms of electricity. The adjectives electric and electrical both apply to electricity, and furthermore, they are interchangable in meaning: i.e. they are exact synonyms, and the choice of which to use is merely custom. Please see "electric motor", "electrical engineer", and "electric current", and note that "electric transformer" and "electrical transformer" are both in use.
Furthermore, the above comment in full of nonsense in the English language because "electric charge", "electricity", "electric current", "physics", and "quantity of electricity", are NOT proper nouns, and they are NOT capitalized, except for in the usual exceptions such as being the first word in a sentence and being used in the titles of books. They may not be capitalized for some form of emphasis, and they must not be capitalized out of sheer ignorace. On the other hand, "Leyden" most certainly is a proper noun, and I have made this change to avoid insulting the entire city of Leyden in The Netherlands. {Please think of New England clam chowder, Brunswick stew, Brussels sprouts, Wiener schnitzel, and New York style cheesecake, in which the capitalized parts remain capitalized. Also, there are names of pastries in Germany with names like "Berliner".} The name Leiden is also spelled like this in modern Dutch.
Furthermore, upon their first appearance, " is the proper form for quotation marks, such as in "Berliner". See the following comments in which this was done already by the writers.98.81.0.161 (talk) 15:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

And I think this thing about electrons moving slowly or cycling backwards and forwards a bit, to my mind that says more about how powerful the electromagnetic forces really are than anything else. They create big forces and hardly move! Feynman once said that if there was a small percentage imbalance in the charges in your body, you would explode at near to the speed of light! Electrical forces are really, really strong!Planetscared (talk) 17:25, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

You want to "cover" this electricity new-fangled idea like phlogiston or aether or the Bohr-Rutherford atom? As a history of science thingie? But where is our cutoff- - about the time of Maxwell's paper of 1861? Since you seem to have no trouble wanting to discuss the near-field inductive parts of the near and far fields of electromagnetics as "electricity", but you don't like the far-fields (EM radiation) that are just as necessary? You're okay with electric trains, motors, transformers and metal detectors, but regard radio as "off the reservation"? How abouy MRI pick-up coils? Are you going to give me the "Lorentz" force? Can Maxwell have back his imaginary displacement current in free space, even though no actual charges are flowing across the insulating capacitor gap (or indeed in any vacuum, for any signal)? Is it at THAT point that Maxwell's romantic notion of EMF takes us into the modern age and requires us to go beyond Faraday and Ampere's quaint "electricity"? SBHarris 21:07, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm certainly not saying that most of those things should be completely excluded, but I don't feel that they're the core of the topic, but they're related in a way that is important to the topic, and thus should be mentioned (probably not MRI coils though, unless I'm missing something).Planetscared (talk) 01:03, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Scope of generation of electrical power

This article refers to "butes" which are kisses. You mean "butts."67.86.9.51 (talk) 02:00, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. Hope you got at least one electric buss for New Year's. SBHarris 06:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Nobody meant anything about "butts" or "butes" at all. Wasn't this obvious? A "bus" is a very heavy electrical conductor, usually made of copper that is used in electric power plants to conduct large amounts of current from the generators to the step-up electrical transformers. The plural of thsi word is "buses". A "buss" is a kiss, and its plural is "busses".

"Butes" is an unknown word, though "buttes" makes sense for the flat-topped mountains of the American Southwest. "Butte" is a word that came from Spanish.98.81.0.161 (talk) 15:51, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Requesting for measuring

In this article can anyone please insert a table showing measurement of electricity as it is in light. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LMANSH (talk • contribs) 05:23, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Conflicting information

This article states in it's section of history that: Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821....... -__- There is an electrical trade textbook that states on page 2.2 at the very top inside the box titled "Early Electric Motors" , and it states: "The first U.S. patent for a motor was issued to Thomas Davenport in 1837. He reported that he used silk from his wife's wedding gown as insulation for the conductors, but despite this sacrifice, his motor was not commercially successful. Practical electric motors, like the practical light bulb, did not appear until the late 19th century." Anonymous until I figure out these "non-forums" ArminHamer (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Just because something received its first American patent, or its first patent in any other country, does not make it the FIRST. The inventor of the very first one might not have patented the invention anywhere at all. Also, given the condition of telecommunications in the 1830s, something could have been invented in Austria, Russia, Japan, Holland, etc., yet the U.S. Patent Office had never heard of it.

Furthermore, I disagree with you about the first practical electric motors having been invented until the late 19th Century, which I take as the 1890s. Practical electric motors existed in the 1870s, if not earlier. Also, there is the question of the size of the electric motor. Naturally, practical electric motors capable of putting out a fraction of a horsepower - especially using direct current - came decades before Nikola Tesla invented his big three-phase induction motors that were capable of an output of hundreds of horsepower of mecanical power.98.81.0.161 (talk) 15:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

The Hall effect

This entire article fails to mention the Hall effect at all, as of February 8, 2013. There should at least be a mention of the Hall effect in a "see also" section.98.81.0.161 (talk) 15:39, 8 February 2013 (UTC)