Electricty - Does It Have A Weight

[TheCoder]

man alive, coder.... you know how to kill jokes don't ya

oh yes !

[Shady]

electricity makes the sound 'zzzzt' and SOMETIMES kills you. OTHER TIMES, it gives you super powers.
It is also helpful in time travel..
yes electricity can be our friend....and our enemy

[barrowmanandrew]

4 pages on and we still dont know the answer

[lee_hdi]

Found this on a academic site

Question submitted by a student - Does electricity have weight? I know that it is a force and therefore has no mass, but does that make it completely weightless? How is that possible?


I think if you really push the issue, you might be able to claim electricity has some "weight". But it is so hard to measure because it is so small, and we are using terms in such imprecise ways that it is easy to get confused. It is on the order of a few electrons.

Electrical force comes from the repulsion of one electron by
another. It might be labeled "electric force" or "magnetic force",
but regardless, that is the source of the force. The electrons have weight. The force between them is "carried" by a photon, like light. A photon has a tiny amount of weight, or mass-- it is bent by a very strong nearby mass, say a star. But it is not bent a lot by the star's gravity, so the "weight" is very little. Too little for you to worry about in daily life.



Before considering whether something has weight, you must first know what weight is. Weight is a force. Weight is how much gravitational force an object feels. On the Earth, your weight is how hard the Earth pulls on you by means of gravitational force.

You must also know what mass is. Mass is a measure of how much material an object is made of. Any object far away from any planets or stars will have mass but not weight. It is not possible to have weight without mass. If something felt a force (such as gravity) but had zero mass, the object would
experience infinite acceleration.

Before continuing, consider something. Think of a real-life example of electricity. Then ask yourself just what gravity would be pulling on. In most cases, the answer turns out to be the electrically charged particles that feel and exert the electric force. Quite often, electrons are the particles involved. "Electricity" flowing through a wire is not actually electricity. It is a set of electrons flowing through a wire, often called
electric current. Static electricity on a balloon or on a wall is not electricity. It is too many or too few electrons, causing a build-up of electric charge. When a set of electric charges are close enough to notice each other, true electricity is the pushing or pulling between these particles due to their electric charges. The particles have weight, not the force between them.

Dr. Ken Mellendorf

[Shady]

i thought we had an experiment that we could actually try? the weight of a wire on its own versus the same wire weight as part of a circuit?

[lee_hdi]

i thought we had an experiment that we could actually try? the weight of a wire on its own versus the same wire weight as part of a circuit?

But adding a source of power would add weight to the wire itself as its adding to the mass

[Shady]

would it? . make a circuit with a wire crossing the scales, then turn current on, see if weight changes
id do it meself, but ive got a 1p peice holding in the battery of me scales and tbh... theyre on their way out

[lee_hdi]

If you have a crocodile clip on either end of the wire to send the power thru it, even if its like 100yards away from the scales, the weight of the crocodile clip is still pulling down on the wire therefore making it heavier, even if its only like 0.00000001grams due to the distance. But it will add weight none the less

[Shady]

yeah.. i understand that.. but you weigh the whole circuit.. current on and current off..

[lee_hdi]

Ahh right. Blonde moment for me there, didn't realise what you were on about

[Shady]

dont worry about it... electrickeries hard... i think we should go back to burning the people who use it as witches

[barrowmanandrew]

would it? . make a circuit with a wire crossing the scales, then turn current on, see if weight changes
id do it meself, but ive got a 1p peice holding in the battery of me scales and tbh... theyre on their way out

blinding idea,
~~~~ everthing on a set of scales, switch it on and see what happens...

[Shady]

hmm yeah... COULD do it with owt couldnt we? a radio, a kettle...anything that uses leccy... can someone with some working scales give it a go and report back?

[RedSpider]

well hurry up with the scales cuz i wanna weigh some flour

[Shady]

thought about it some more... IF we tried it with a radio, and it DOES change weight... how do we ascertain whether its down to the leccy or the little people inside the radio?