So just how do electrons move. We know that they move very quickly. Electrons move at a fraction of the speed of light. These electrons tend to move around a more massive nucleus and can be fit into orbitals. Various levels of energy can be attributed to these orbitals.
Do electrons move differently when they are in the presence of a capacitor, inductor or resistor? This blog post seeks to explore the statistical process of electron movement in the presence of a capacitor. Perhaps in capacitors electrons move as the pistons move in a boxer engine.
We know that charge carriers pile into capacitors as the voltage increases. An uncharged capacitor contains no potential energy. When the capacitor is charged we say that the electric field formed charging the capacitors contains energy. But what does this look like from an electron movement point of view. How far are electrons traveling and if they travel far why doesn't electric current just flow?
When a coulomb of electrons approaches a capacitor some charge makes its way through the capacitor and out the other end. This is not like a conductor though. As the charge makes its way through the dielectric the charge is replaced by electrons bonded to the dielectric. These bonded electrons are far less energetic than the electrons they are replacing.
Electrons flow into the dielectric and are replaced by less energetic electrons until all of the charges match and the capacitor is said to be charged. Back to the analogy of the boxer engine where we have pistons and electrons moving one way and almost at the same time we have a counter movement of electrons or pistons moving in the opposite direction. All of this happens at a fraction of the speed of light that is to say very quickly.
