How is the electric field maintained throughout the wiring / the conductors from component to component? The charges are moving far away from the voltage source (the battery) so how is the electric field maintained?
A very simple example
A very simple example is two capacitor plates charged. There is postive charge on one and negative on another plate. This gives a uniform electric field between them with high potential at the positive plate and lower potential at the negative.
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If a straight wire is placed between the plates without touching, charges will move in the wire (for a very short while, I know) from higher to lover potential.
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If a not-straight wire is curving away (maybe into other parts of the circuit) and away from the space between the capacitors, then the charges in the wire are not inside the electric field the whole time.
So what is moving them? There must be an electric field throughout the wire all the way, to cause a force on the charges to keep them moving, but how is it created?
Best Answer
There is a portion of that wire near the plate with the positive charge, in that portion of the wire, conduction electrons will want to flow towards it. But each conduction electron then leaves behind a excess of positive charge because the proton it used to cancel out no isn't cancelled out, so a conduction electron a bit farther away is attracted to the proton location vacated by that electron.
It's like a job market. You can hire away a best employee from another firm, then that firm, who used to have the best because they wanted the best now replaces that person with the second best employee by stealing them from another firm, and now that firm has to steal the third best from another firm, etc.
In short that constant electric field is just the electric field due to the plate capacitor, but every proton and electron in the wire also produces its own electric field and the electrons in the wire respond to the total field, even the fields due to the other electrons and protons in the wire.