Good evening! I am reading up on electricity just for the fun of it. I am still a complete beginner.
With that out of the way, I wonder: are electrons negatively charged inanimate objects, perhaps particles, or are they merely negative charge with no physical form? But perhaps without there being an object to exert charge there is no charge?
An other way of asking this question would to my beginner mind be: could we tag and track an individual electron as it flows - perhaps in a piece of copper without significant voltage so that the electron doesn’t rush away in the speed of light?
I guess I want to know this in order to understand whether electrons actually loop around in a closed DC circuit in the speed of light or are they just pushing the electron in front of them, creating a domino effect, not actually traveling very far?
Please excuse my incoherent formulation. It’s late at night where I am and of course these questions come to mind when I’m trying to sleep.
Charge is a property of a particle. You can’t have charge with no physical form.
Whether electrons zoom or bump or flow depends on how closely you look. The best answer, without several courses of physics, is just don’t worry about it, you apply charge to a wire and it conducts. The short “real” answer is that electrons kind of move like a gas along the conductor.