Electricity and Magnetism

An interesting fact about the most pervasive invisible forces in the universe are how they interact with each other at right angles. A magnet will not affect a charged particle unless the particle moves at a right angles, or at least tangentially, to the magnetic field. The result is another force that appears at a right angle to both of the above forces. This is quite interesting when you think of it.

Nobody knows why a magnetic field affects a moving charge or why its effects are maximum when the forces are at right angles to each other or why there is virtually no effect when the forces are parallel. It is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

The image below is a tool that I invented for myself because I needed and easy way to figure out how an electron will behave in a magnetic field. All the other 'hand rules' that can be found in the text books are rules for dealing with electrical current. The true is there is no such thing as electrical current when dealing with electricity as an engineer. Current is a fictional thing that flows from positive to negative electrical potential. Well, in a wire there is no such thing that flows from positive to negative.

A wire is a crystalline matrix of metal atom that are bound together, not by the outer most electron orbits, as normal organic molecules are, but by a the next lower orbital. That is what is known as metallic bonding. The outer most orbits then overlap each other and the electrons are much more free to be exchanged with their neighbor. It is the electrons that move in an electric current and not the positive charges. The positive nucleus is bound in a matrix and can not flow as the electrons do.

That is the reason I came up with my 'hand rule'. They are for dealing with electrons and the flow of electrons. 'Current' thinking is backwards, I joke.