What is electricity and how does it flow through a wire?
The Electron Stampede
What is electricity and how does it flow through a wire?
Flip a switch, and the room floods with light — instantly, like magic. But it isn't magic. It's a stampede of something so tiny you'll never see one. Let's meet the stampede.
Everything around you is made of atoms — impossibly small building blocks. And whirling around each atom are even tinier specks called electrons. Here's the trick: in metals like copper, the outermost electrons are barely held on at all. They drift around loosely, like marbles rolling in a shallow tray, ready to wander.
