No current should flow in this circuit, you’d think, because the pieces of foil can’t touch each other–and without contact, there’s nothing but an insulator to flow across, and electricity doesn’t ...

Physicists are familiar with persistent currents in superconductors – in which electrons can flow forever, unhindered by resistance. But even the best normal conductors such as copper or gold have ...

In a circuit connected to a battery, the electrons are the charge carrier and flow from the battery’s negative terminal, around the circuit and back to the positive terminal.

When atom clouds go with the flow Time to retire the old soldering iron? In the "atomtronic" circuits pictured on the right, it is atoms, not electrons, that flow. Such circuits could form the ...

In fact, the speed is so slow that electrons in an AC circuit hardly move at all since they just pace back and forth a very small amount on each half cycle.

In a normal electric circuit, say the wiring in your house, electrons bump and jostle each other and the surrounding atoms as they flow. That wastes some energy, which leaves the circuit as heat.

Today's lithium-ion chargers start out pumping electrons into a discharged battery at whatever level the plugs or circuit breakers allow.

The phenomenon represents a milestone in the emerging field of ‘atomtronics’, which seeks to create a whole new class of devices that use the flow of atoms, rather than electrons, in a circuit.

In their simulations of 2D semiconductors with strong electron-phonon interactions, the researchers found that when treating both the charge and heat carriers as part of the same system, the ...