I had been taught amongst other explainations that it's the
transmission of free holes and not the electron.

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 08:58:07 -0400, "Roger W. Norman"
wrote:

The only thing I'd disagree with is that current flows, yes, but electrons
stay where they are. They excite the next molecule when polarized in one
direction by current, but electrons don't move down a line even in DC.
Otherwise all the electrons would ultimately go away and you'd no longer
have molecules of whatever the carrier is and no current would flow. In
other words, an electrical current would be a catalyst that would change the
atomic weight of a molecule in DC. In AC the electron simply excites the
next molecule's electron in a positive direction, and then a negative
direction, doing this 120 times a second in a two phase system, 180 times in
a three phase system.

I recall Stephen Paul (RIP) having what turned out to be a rather heated
discussion here about the fact that electrons don't actually flow, but a lot
of people either didn't get the discussion, or have this weird idea that
electrons jump from molecule to another in the direction of current. Even
if this were true, the best case is that an electron would be shared between
two molecules in AC generation. But, in fact, the initially excited
electron only jumps to an excited state within it's molecule (more enegetic
orbit), which excites the next molecule, and then it drops back to it's
"steady" state when power isn't flowing. The only difference is the
direction of the phase, meaning current flow.

The kicker is in the fact that, at absolute zero you get a halt in brownian
movement, and yet you also get absolutely no resistance to current flow,
which absolutely means that electrons aren't flowing down a copper wire.

For reference of Stephens somewhat rambling post, read
http://www.google.com/groups?q=elect...dio.com&rnum=2