Reply To: Set up a holding company

[jjohnson]

Per present convention, a positive “test charge” moves toward the more negatively charged (electron surplus) side of a circuit, electrical field or voltage differential. Therefore negative charges move in the opposite direction. A current thus can actually have electrons moving in one direction and positive ions, protons, etc moving in the opposite direction simultaneously.

In a conventional “wire” the metallic ions are fairly tightly bound into the metallic “crystal” lattice, so they are hardly free to move, while the electrons are highly mobile and can move (at drift current speed, not the speed of light) along the wire. In a conducting plasma, both species are unbound and free to move, and do, in accordance with Maxwell’s and Lorentz’s laws.

Jim