Background: I'm in a legal academic discussion about the status of electronic 'goods' and whether they qualify as 'goods' in the same way a chair and a pen do. In this context (and specifically at the exact circumstance under discussion), it matters if electricity is 'tangible'. So far, most authors have blindly assumed electricity to be a flow of electrons, making a literal analogy with water, making statements such as:
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Information is stored in capacitors in the form of electrons. When a capacitor is filled more than 50% with electrons, it's considered to be 'on' (a bit with value '1').
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The information represented by a certain current (or rather, a series of on/off currents) has mass, because it consists of the electrons that flow through the wire.
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A virtual object is tangible because it exists in memory in the form of electrons that are there (or not) in a certain pattern.
Now I have a background in informatics but only a basic knowledge of electricity, and as good as none on the fundamental (physics) level. However I still feel this representation is wrong, and that you can't just say that information in a RAM chip has mass because it consists of electrons that are or are not in the capacitors on that chip. I have found hints in that direction on sites such as http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html#made, but I can't quite make out what 'electricity' is and how it relates to current and potential and other words that are used interchangeably in these discussions but which are, I think, different things.
So my questions are (all just different angles of looking at the same underlying concept):
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What is 'electricity', really, on a fundamental level; but explained in terms a layman can understand? Is there an analogy with other things that is accurate, unlike the 'flowing water' analogy, which is sufficient for high school level but is a simplification? (at least, I think…)
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Do 'electricity', an 'electrical current' and an 'electrical charge' have mass, apart from the object they are embodies in? Does the mass of a copper wire change when you put a current through it, because of the electrons coming in and going out?
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How do electrons fit into this? Is electricity composed of a bunch of electrons that flow through a mass? I think not, reading the link I gave before, but I don't quite understand what their role is.
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Most authors blindly assume that electricity is merely a flow of electrons through mass. In how far and under what assumptions is this correct?
Best Answer
Interesting, but I'm don't think you are asking the right questions in the context of law.
The point is that electrons and electricity are completely irrelevant when it comes to the question of "tangible" and "electronic" "goods". You will obtain a good answer only if you forget about electricity, which just happens to be a convenient physical carrier of information, and focus on the objects that might or might not be goods like a chair or a pen. A proper question would be this: "Is a newspaper article a good, like a chair or a pen?". Specifying whether the newspaper article is written on paper or "on electrons" or on something else is besides the point because the concept of "newspaper article" is entirely independent of the material it is written on.
To put it more pointedly: if you have to know the metaphysical nature of electricity to make a law about newspapers, you're definitely doing it wrong. ;-)
Keeping in mind that your questions and their answers are completely useless in the context of law, I can now proceed to answer them.
I don't know of any good analogy to electricity that captures it properly. It is like gravitation in that distant bodies attract each other, except that in electricity, bodies can also repel each other. Furthermore, the gravitational pull of, say, a chair is so small that we don't think of a chair as attracting us gravitationally. This is also why the water analogy doesn't work so well: water does not attract other water from afar. The "cause" for attraction/repulsion is the electrical charge.
The carriers of charge, like electrons or ions (= atoms with electrons missing) do have a mass. You can think of them as tiny, charged balls flying around through space (keep in mind that a copper wire consist of mostly empty space, too). On the other hand, electrical current does not have a mass, just like a water current does not have a mass, it simply doesn't make sense. (Both imply a mass current, however.) Likewise, electricity is a general term and does not have a mass, just like "law" and "liberty" don't have a mass.
The mass of a copper wire is the sum of the masses of its constituents, some of which are electrons. However, the number electrons exiting a copper wire is usually the same as the number of electrons entering the copper wire, so its mass does not change. In any case, the mass of electrons is way too small to make more than a negligible contribution to the total mass of the wire anyway.
Again, "electricity" is a general term. The link you mentioned refers to electric current, which is the same as flow of charge. Basically, the link says that electrons are not the only tiny balls that carry a charge. This is indeed the case. It's just that in the common case of metals, electrical current is usually carried by electrons.
This question is not well-posed. Again, electricity is a very general term and encompasses things like electric field, electric current, electric charge etc. For instance, light is part of electricity as well, because it's an electromagnetic wave.