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View Full Version : so, in electronic circuits, do you trace current flow as hole flow or electron flow?

Dr. Tweedbucket
09-20-2010, 07:05 AM
... some engineers seem to like the hole flow concept, while others seem to think electron flow makes more sense.

Electron flow seems more logical to me :red I mean, those are the things that go crazy when heated up, so they are the ones on the move. Negative to positive baby!
hasserl
09-20-2010, 08:42 AM
in electronic circuits, do you trace current flow as hole flow or electron flow?

Yes.

Making things more complicated is you're dealing with both AC & DC and 2 systems, the power supply and the signal path.
Old Tele man
09-20-2010, 09:39 AM
..."hole flow" is associated with solid-state devices, while "electron flow" is most often associated with military-electronics and vacuum tube era.
Dr. Tweedbucket
09-20-2010, 11:05 AM
..."hole flow" is associated with solid-state devices, while "electron flow" is most often associated with military-electronics and vacuum tube era.



I was talking a simple DC circuit, and it would be nice to have a standard; Negative to positive or positive to negative.
Ronsonic
09-20-2010, 11:59 AM
Conventional current or electron flow, always the question. "Hole flow" is just silly. Holes don't move. Not good for my visualizing a circuit except on the molecular level of a solid state device and I don't have to do that. So it's "conventional current" not hole flow.

I simply use whatever makes the circuit in front of me easiest to comprehend. From Ben Franklin until WW2, everybody used conventional current. When the US military found the need to train tens of thousands of techs in about no time flat, they used electron flow to explain vacuum tubes, the core technology of the day and it stuck. Nowadays it is all application dependent. If you use electron flow your equations are going to be filled with negative (-) signs that you'll cancel out before getting your answer anyway so why not start without them and call it conventional current.
hasserl
09-20-2010, 02:05 PM
IMO you just consider the flow what it is and work with it as such. Meaning, electrons move from negative to positive, but you don't ignore the fact that as an electron moves from one atom to another it leaves a hole behind that is filled with another electron. It is what it is, you shouldn't have to consider only one aspect of it.