But good sir, what is electricity?

Sign conventions, holes, and historical artifacts

• Several comments focus on the oddity that “current” is defined as positive charge flowing, opposite to electron motion, and that semiconductor theory talks about “holes” moving.
• This is traced to an arbitrary pre-electron sign choice in early experiments; by the time electrons were understood, engineering practice was too entrenched to flip.
• Some argue this convention causes genuine confusion in education and wastes collective time; others insist it’s a trivial, learn-once quirk with negligible practical impact.

Static electricity and triboelectric confusion

• Discussion of Franklin’s rubbing-glass experiments leads into the triboelectric series: which material becomes positive or negative depends subtly on the contact pair and even history.
• Commenters note that triboelectric charging is still not fully understood; experimental orderings can be inconsistent and even cyclic (A> B, B> C, C> A), which challenges simple linear models.

Where energy and “electricity” actually flow

• A recurring theme is whether it’s better to think in terms of electrons in wires or electromagnetic fields in space.
• Some emphasize that energy flow is described by fields (and the Poynting vector) mostly outside conductors, with resistance representing energy entering the material; this connects to high‑frequency behavior, impedance, and transmission lines.
• Others push back that “energy outside the wire” is a misleading teaching model for most practical DC and low‑frequency work, where thinking of current in conductors remains effective.

Speeds: propagation vs drift and thermal motion

• The article’s point that fields propagate near light speed while electrons drift extremely slowly is elaborated: electrons already move very fast thermally in random directions; the field only adds a small net “bias.”
• Commenters distinguish drift velocity, thermal (Fermi) motion, and the speed of electromagnetic disturbances through different media, noting that signals in copper or dielectrics travel at some fraction of the vacuum speed of light.

Quantum nature of electrons and charge

• Several comments dig into electrons as excitations of quantum fields rather than little orbiting balls; “orbitals” are probability distributions constrained by symmetry, not miniature planetary systems.
• There is debate over how much of this should be taught early: some want group theory and orbital symmetry presented up front; others say the needed math is too advanced.
• Broader questions arise: what is charge, momentum, or “positive charge” at all? The consensus is that these are deeply tied to symmetries and conservation laws, and that intuition built from everyday experience fails at this scale.

Teaching, analogies, and “lies to children”

• Many note that every educational level introduces useful but wrong models, later refined (“lies to children”).
• Water‑flow analogies, Bohr’s atom, and electron‑as-billiard‑ball are criticized for becoming sticky misconceptions, yet defended as productive scaffolding when clearly labeled as approximations.
• There’s disagreement over whether we over‑prioritize “intuitive” stories instead of teaching the hard, abstract truth, especially at university level.

Superconductivity, resistance, and materials

• A side thread explains superconductivity qualitatively: lattice vibrations (phonons) mediate Cooper pairs that condense into a collective quantum state, eliminating resistance below a critical temperature.
• Others add that ordinary resistance reflects electrons scattering off a vibrating lattice; reduced lattice motion at low temperature lowers resistivity even without superconductivity.

Philosophical limits and models of reality

• Multiple commenters reflect that as you dig deeper into electricity, explanations become less intuitive and more purely mathematical, leading to a sense that “nothing underpins reality” beyond equations.
• This is linked to the idea that all our concepts are internal models tuned for survival, not faithful mirrors of the underlying physics; all models are incomplete, though some are extremely useful.
• Jokes, quotes, and anecdotes underline a shared feeling: we can predict electrical phenomena very well, but what electricity “really is” remains philosophically elusive.