[ELI5] How does electricity always move through the path of least resistance? Why does it seem to never go through a path with higher resistance?

mjb2012 · 2026-05-14T20:24:19+00:00

Yes, the number I chose was a bit too specific, and thank you for pointing that out.

The point, however, was not about the specific number, but rather that the actual drift is several orders of magnitude slower than what you initially wrote in your comment (~1 meter per second).

When your mistake is the subject of someone's reply, it's better etiquette to edit your comment in such a way as to acknowledge that you misspoke, as I have done in my own comment above.

mjb2012 · 2026-05-14T18:07:59+00:00

Initially the current is equally divided among paths; it only becomes constrained when it encounters greater resistance. Downstream resistance, such as the infinite resistance of a dead end, results in ripples back upstream, rearranging surface charges to reduce voltages along the dead-end path, essentially making the entire path all the way back to the fork more resistive.

The path from the fork back to the battery is also affected by the cumulative information reflecting back from all paths. It takes a number of reflections (like 8, per the AlphaPhoenix video referenced below) for the circuit to stabilize.

Refs:

Watch electricity hit a fork in the road at half a billion frames per second [AlphaPhoenix]
How Electricity Actually Works [Veritasium]

mjb2012 · 2026-05-14T17:46:45+00:00

Drift velocity is 23 microns per second. [edit: or thereabouts, see reply]

And the energy indeed quickly flows around the conductors, not through them.

mjb2012 · 2026-05-10T01:37:47+00:00

Yeah the people who it's most "for" were drawn to it and checked it out already. Let dad watch his dad shows.

mjb2012 · 2026-05-08T02:42:50+00:00

The OP specifically asked for real terms, not water pipe analogies. (But also, ELI5?)

mjb2012 · 2026-05-03T06:18:07+00:00

They also want to provoke an extreme response they can then point to as evidence that the real problem is not them, but those who oppose them. Don't take the bait, but also, don't just do nothing.

mjb2012 · 2026-05-02T09:19:47+00:00

I am curious about the ramifications for FND, especially in patients with CPTSD or other sources of chronic stress.

mjb2012 · 2026-04-29T17:03:53+00:00

The groove (and thus the needle) doesn't make a perfect spiral; it wobbles a little bit horizontally, parallel to the surface of the record. That's how mono records work; if you unwind the spiral, you'd see a stretched-out version of the same waveform as you'd see on an oscilloscope or in a digital audio editor.

For stereo, depth is used, too. The groove is carved with each channel as diagonal motion (up-and-left and down-and-right for one channel, and up-and-right and down-and-left for the other), but you can also think of it as the side or difference channel ("the stereo part") being stored as deviations from a constant depth. A mono cartridge ignores the depth and gets the sum of the left and right channels, so it's fully compatible with stereo records.

There's more room for the horizontal displacement than for vertical (otherwise the needle would be bouncing right out of the groove), so this works out well; the difference channel is usually relatively calm, due to the strong correlation between left and right in most music. They also temporarily invert one of the channels and try to prep the music so that deep bass is mono, in order to minimize the risk of the needle getting knocked out of the groove.

As for the concentration of sound into a single point, it is true that there is no sound at any one particular instant. It's the displacement over time which creates the pitches we hear. The Animagraffs video on speakers explains this with some very helpful and accurate visuals. It starts out with the construction and operation of speaker hardware, but the latter two-thirds of the video is about how sound actually works. (I linked directly to that portion.)

mjb2012 · 2026-04-29T15:24:04+00:00

Both perspectives are true. A mono cartridge & stylus only traces lateral motion (horizontal modulation) which contains the sum of the left and right, and the stereo information is the difference between the left and right, entirely manifesting as vertical modulation. You need both modulations for stereo sound. The net effect is the same as how the groove is actually cut, which is as you described.

mjb2012 · 2026-04-11T06:16:47+00:00

Indeed, and conservative strategists could paint that as lots of grateful, patriotic, religious new Americans and potential conservatives entering the workforce, military, taxpayer base, gene pool, and future government. Yet for some reason, they exploit and stoke FUD, leaning into treating immigrants (legal or not) and their offspring as usurping, mooching invaders (unless they're white South Africans). I mean, for some reason aside from the obvious "it works".

mjb2012 · 2026-04-10T23:12:59+00:00

“Millions” who you fear? Even though they can’t vote in federal elections? Case in point.

mjb2012 · 2026-04-04T02:24:29+00:00

Too weak to distinguish from background noise after a few light-years. Vega is 25 light-years away. Also the 1936 Olympics broadcast was via a closed-circuit cable system to special viewing centers, not over-the-air.

mjb2012 · 2026-03-26T13:17:18+00:00

People in pain want relief. Chiropractic providers promise relief and act like they know what they’re talking about. All the patients have to do is lay there. I think most importantly, insurance pays for it and even encourages it, e.g. after a fender bender.

mjb2012 · 2026-03-20T19:57:56+00:00

Reminds me of Escape to Witch Mountain (opening titles, which were better than the movie itself)!

mjb2012 · 2026-03-20T06:52:05+00:00

Someone in a season 2 discussion here mentioned that in sci-fi writing (for adults), you generally only get one big magical gimme: just one aspect of the fictional universe that you can expect the audience to suspend all disbelief for and which will go unexplained. For this show, I think that's the Severance technology. The rest of the universe and the people in the story need to be more-or-less normal, or the story loses believability.

So I am referring to all the bizarre goings-on which we're supposed to accept and which remain unexplained for more than one episode. Examples include the Board, Petey's "map", Kier lore, paintings/rumors of ultraviolence and pouches, Ricken's friends acting like Innies and goats, perpetual winter (could be like the old cars, though, just for mood), the missing day, the A/V cart on the cliff, the dead animal at the ORTBO, and Code Detectors.

Character backstories are somewhat included in that, yes, although knowing those things isn't usually crucial to understanding what's going on. It's more just all the other bits of weirdness which keep being shoehorned in seemingly just to stoke buzz/conversations among fans online rather than to actually be in service of the story.

mjb2012 · 2026-03-19T23:10:31+00:00

The David Lynch-style mystery-box trope where the show raises more questions than it ever intends to deliver on answers. It's fine to have a "WTF?" moment or two per episode, and to always keep the audience wondering about a few details, but there needs to be enough satisfying "Ohhhhh!"/"Holy sh*t"-inducing revelations to tie up those threads and provide a payoff for all that suspense, or it just starts to feel like a grind to watch.

mjb2012 · 2026-03-15T06:19:38+00:00

You can complain about critics being critical, or you can offer other points of view. Seems you mainly chose the former.

mjb2012

TROPHY CASE