[Physics] What’s the reason behind the current remaining the same after passing by a resistance

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I've been wondering why does this really happen, I mean by intuition if electrons are driven by EMF (ignoring wire's resistance), $n$ coulombs would pass by a point per second, until they encounter something that slows them down thus the rate of flow would change. Why does current remain the same?

One answer I saw somewhere that made sense to me is that it indeed slows electrons down, but electrons lose some of their energy to compensate the loss of velocity in a way that would bring the current back to the constant current, and this lose of energy is called drop in voltage and that's why voltage decreases when running over some resistance, is this true?

Best Answer

What's the reason behind the current remaining the same after passing by a resistance?

Because, due to the redistribution of charges (and voltages), the electric field inside a resistor is stronger than the electric field inside a wire.

This redistribution happens automatically. Initially, the electric field is evenly distributed and the electrons in the wire move faster than the electrons inside the resistor. As a result, electrons accumulate in front of the resistor and positive ions accumulate behind it. This increases the voltage and the electric field across the resistor, causing the electrons inside the resistor to move faster.

Since the voltage of the battery stays the same, the increase of the voltage across the resistor leads to the decrease of the voltage and, therefore, the decrease of the electric field in the wire, causing the electrons in the wire to move slower.

As the electrons in the resistor move faster and faster and the electrons in the wire move slower and slower, at some point, their speeds will equalize. At this point, the redistribution of charges will stop and the current in all parts of the circuit will be the same.

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