Conventional And Electric Current

Conventional current flow is the one most often used.

Conventional and electric current. The conventional symbol for current is i which originates from the french phrase intensité du courant current intensity. Two types of current are normally employed is electric circuit one is conventional current and another one is electron current. 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. We need a notation to do some calculations like in kirchhoff s law.

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. Electric current any movement of electric charge carriers such as electrons protons ions or holes. This was the convention chosen during the discovery of electricity. The flow of electrons from source negative terminal to positive terminal is termed as electron current.

There is often a lot of misunderstanding about conventional current flow and electron flow. 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. Electric current can be either negative or positive but conventional current is always positive. The notation travelled from france to great britain where it.

Conventional current and electron 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. Conventional current on the other hand is the flow of positive charges and is directed from positive terminal of the battery to the negative terminal. Electron current and conventional current are two types of notation we use to mention current flow in a circuit.

Conventional current assumes that current flows out of the positive terminal through the circuit and into the negative terminal of the source. Here all electrons flow from the negative terminal to the positive. 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. When so defined the current is called conventional current.

The conventional current for an electron flow is positive whereas the electrical current is negative. Current intensity is often referred to simply as current. Hence electric current is the flow of electrons in a circuit. The same is true for the electrical current.

It is directed from the negative terminal to the positive terminal. These two notations are opposite to each other. And we consider conventional current as the standard notation of current flow. This illustrates conventional current flow.