No current should flow in this circuit, you’d think, because the pieces of foil can’t touch each other–and without contact, there’s nothing but an insulator to flow across, and electricity doesn’t ...

In fact, the speed is so slow that electrons in an AC circuit hardly move at all since they just pace back and forth a very small amount on each half cycle.

This has come to be known as conventional current flow. Then in 1897, British physicist Thompson, discovered that current flow was really electrons as he was doing some research on a crt.

A new type of switch sends electrons propagating in opposite directions along the same paths – without ever colliding with each other. The switch works by controlling the presence of so-called ...