Conventional And Electric Current

Conventional current and electron flow.

Conventional and electric current.

This was the convention chosen during the discovery of electricity. The conventional symbol for current is i which originates from the french phrase intensité du courant current intensity. We need a notation to do some calculations like in kirchhoff s law. Conventional current assumes that current flows out of the positive terminal through the circuit and into the negative terminal of the source.

Electron current and conventional current are two types of notation we use to mention current flow in a circuit. Electric current in a wire where the charge carriers are electrons is a measure of the quantity of charge passing any point of the wire per unit of time. There is often a lot of misunderstanding about conventional current flow and electron flow. For a flow of positive charges both the electric current and the conventional current are the same.

Here all electrons flow from the negative terminal to the positive. It is directed from the negative terminal to the positive terminal. All descriptions of electronic circuits use conventional current so if you see an arrow depicting current flow in a circuit diagram you know it is showing the direction of conventional current flow. The i symbol was used by andré marie ampère after whom the unit of electric current is named in formulating ampère s force law 1820.

The flow of electrons from source negative terminal to positive terminal is termed as electron current. Hence electric current is the flow of electrons in a circuit. Conventional current is the flow of a positive charge from positive to negative and is the reverse of real electron flow. Electric current can be either negative or positive but conventional current is always positive.

The same is true for the electrical current. Two types of current are normally employed is electric circuit one is conventional current and another one is electron current. Electric current any movement of electric charge carriers such as electrons protons ions or holes. And we consider conventional current as the standard notation of current flow.

In the image below we can see current moving from the positive terminal of the battery through the resistance to the negative terminal of the battery. The notation travelled from france to great britain where it. Conventional current flow is the one most often used. This illustrates conventional current flow.

When so defined the current is called conventional current. To gain an idea of the flow of electrons it takes 6 24 billion billion electrons per second to flow for a current of one ampere. The conventional current for an electron flow is positive whereas the electrical current is negative. Current intensity is often referred to simply as current.