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To: coconutt2000
Electric current consists simply of the flow of charged particles.

It doesn't matter whether they're positive or negative. Usually they're electrons (negative) because they're relatively easy to get sufficiently free of atoms that they can flow; either through a conductor (e.g., a wire), through a gas (e.g., a lightning bolt), or empty space (e.g, a vacuum tube).

But they can be positive too. Most of the world's biggest atom smashers accelerate protons, which are postive particles with the same magnitude of charge as an electron, but about 1836 times their mass.

Another truly weird positive particle is the "hole," which is the absence of an electron where there's "supposed" to be one in a semiconductor material. You'd think that you could just treat holes mathematically like tiny regions that are missing electrons, but you can't. You have to treat them as objects of positive charge and negative mass, which makes sense (to the extent that it does) only through the use of quantum mechanical models of the solid state.

Semiconductor devices (microchips, etc.) depend as much on hole conduction as they do electron conduction.

30 posted on 04/22/2006 2:56:26 AM PDT by Erasmus (Eat beef. Someone has to control the cow population!)
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To: Erasmus
BTW, I sure wish I could find a way to make money off these guys. I'm afraid that would be harder than getting anything out of the widow of a dead Nigerian general. In the latter case, it has at least been done.

I guess the only real way to make money in this realm is not to scam the moonbats, but compete with 'em for the dollars of the scamee class.

35 posted on 04/22/2006 3:03:01 AM PDT by Erasmus (Eat beef. Someone has to control the cow population!)
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