GED Info

Many encyclopedias, dictionaries, and textbooks contain very clear statements about the nature of Electricity. They say electricity is a type of energy and electric current is a flow of energy.

The above statements are wrong. Yes, electrical energy does exist. However, this energy cannot be called “Electricity,” since Coulombs of electricity are very different from Joules of electromagnetic energy. They’re two different things, so the energy and the charge cannot both be the electricity. It’s not too difficult to demonstrate the mistake.

In a lightbulb, charges of electricity flow through the filament and back out again. None are lost. This electricity enters the light bulb through one wire, and the same amount of electricity leaves through the other wire. Yet the energy doesn’t act like this at all. The light bulb uses up the electric energy: the electrical energy flows into the bulb along both wires and is transformed into heat and light. The electrical energy does not come back out through the second wire and return to the battery.

How can dictionaries, encyclopedias, and textbooks make such a gigantic error about electricity?

ANSWERS
1. If an error becomes extremely widespread, and hundreds of thousands of people begin making the same mistake, then the error will become invisible.