© 2026 David R. Young — Spectrum Energy Research Foundation · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
We use electricity constantly, yet the ordinary picture of it is muddled: electrons
are said to "flow" from the power plant to the lamp, as though they travel the length
of the wire. They do not. The electrons at the lamp are already there, waiting in the
wire, not in motion. The moment the switch flips, they move. What reached them, at
nearly the speed of light, to make that happen? And what did it travel through? This
note follows those questions step by step — past the easy answers — to a clean
definition built on what can be watched and measured.
Begin with two facts that are easy to confirm and hard to reconcile.
First: when you flip a switch, the lamp lights at once. The signal reaches the far end
of the wire at nearly the speed of light.
Second: the electrons in the wire barely move. Drive a typical current through copper
and each electron drifts only a small distance before the alternating push reverses it —
on the order of a few thousand atoms each way, never the length of the wire. Their
fastest natural speed inside the metal is about two hundred times slower than the
signal.
So the thing that arrives instantly is not the electrons. They are far too slow. Watch
the two numbers side by side and the conclusion arrives on its own: whatever races down
the wire is not the electrons traveling. It is something else, and the electrons only
respond to it.
Call that something the push. Start by watching it where nothing flows at all: connect a
generator with no load — an open circuit — and a voltage still appears at the
terminals. The push is present even though nothing flows. This tells us the push is one
thing and the flow is another. Close the circuit and the push drives the electrons that
were already there into motion.
Nothing is shipped from the generator to the lamp. The wire is already full of electrons,
end to end, before anything happens — the way a pipe is already full of water. You do not
send new water down a full pipe; you push the column that is already in it, and the far
end moves at once. The electrons are the water. The push is what travels.
A push that travels through a full medium while the medium itself barely moves is a
familiar thing. Drop a stone in a pond and a ripple races outward while the water only
bobs in place. Sound is the same: the air carries the wave, but each molecule only
shivers back and forth. These are force waves — disturbances that carry a push through a
medium without carrying the medium along.
Electricity belongs to this family: it is a force wave. But it cannot be a mechanical
force wave like the ripple or the sound, and the reason is the speed. A mechanical wave
travels at the speed of sound in its medium — about 1,500 m/s in water, 5,000 m/s in
steel. In a conductor, loose electrons from each atom's outer shell drift freely among
the atoms — this is called the electron sea, and it is the electric field of electricity.
A disturbance pushed through that sea, electron shoving electron, would travel at the
sea's own speed — and the fastest the electrons themselves naturally move is under one
percent of the speed of light. That is still well over a hundred times too slow to be the
signal. Each electron also carries a small magnet at its core — the source of its
electromagnetic nature. A disturbance passed from one of these tiny magnets to the next,
a tilting handed down the line, is slower still. No mechanical wave through the electrons
can move at the speed we measure.
But the carrier does ride the wire. Bend a conductor into any shape and the signal
follows every curve. Standard physics explains this through waveguide theory: the
conductor's surface shapes the electromagnetic field's boundary conditions, so the
field — which carries the energy — follows the wire's geometry even though it propagates
in the space around the conductor, not inside the metal. The research proposes a
different reading: the wave rides the wire's own internal structure — the lattice of
atoms, from the nucleus through the bound electrons up to the paired electrons in the
shell next to the outer one. Under this model, the free outer-shell electrons
are not the medium — they are the responders. The lattice is the medium. Both
interpretations predict the signal following every bend.
There is a second piece of evidence. When copper solidifies, it forms patches of crystal
called grains, each with its own lattice alignment. Where two grains meet, the lattice
shifts direction slightly. Each grain boundary adds a measurable increase in resistance.
Standard physics explains this through electron scattering: the disrupted lattice
periodicity at grain boundaries changes the electron wave functions, increasing
resistance. The research reads it differently: the force wave notices when the lattice
shifts orientation, and the misalignment impedes the wave directly. Both models predict
the same resistance increase at grain boundaries.
A superconductor sharpens this question. Superconducting materials still have grain
boundaries — the lattice misalignments remain. Yet resistance drops to zero. If grain
boundaries themselves were the cause of resistance, they should still impede the wave
in a superconductor. They do not. What changed is the coupling between the wave and the
material's magnetic fields. When that coupling is removed (see Research Note 042), grain
boundaries stop mattering — the wave is no longer interacting with the magnetic
misalignment at the boundary. This supports the reading that resistance comes from the
wave's interaction with internal magnetic fields, not from lattice geometry per se.
As the force wave rides the lattice, it shows two characteristics at once, and the two
cannot be pulled apart. One is electric — a push on charge. The other is magnetic — the
research proposes this arises from the wave displacing the internal atomic magnetic
fields outward as it passes each point. The magnetic field measured outside the wire is,
in this reading, the internal fields being pushed out by the wave — not a separate thing
generated by the current, but the same event that produces the current, seen from the
outside. Standard physics accounts for the same external magnetic field through Ampère's
law: the moving charges (current) produce the magnetic field as a direct consequence of
charge in motion.
The superconductor supports the displacement reading: the Meissner effect is the
complete expulsion of internal magnetic fields, and the persistent current and external
field appear together as two aspects of one event (see Research Note 042). In a normal
conductor, the displacement is partial and continuous — the wave pushes the fields
outward at each point as it passes, producing the external field pattern that moves
with the wave.
Hold a compass beside a wire and start the current, and the needle swings at once. The
magnetic disturbance appears the instant the push does, and there is no way to produce
the one without the other. Two individual characteristics, always arriving together —
this pairing is what brought on the term electro-magnetic. Both models agree on this
inseparability; they differ on what produces the magnetic component.
The strength of the wave at any point is its amplitude — the size of the push it delivers
there. Increase the flux and the amplitude rises; the push grows; the electrons move
farther. Increase it enough and the wire melts — the force overwhelms the lattice.
Amplitude is the "how hard." It is the force.
As the wave passes each point along the wire, its two characteristics meet the electrons
waiting there, and each one produces its own response.
Watch the free electrons first. In a metal like copper, each atom gives up an electron
from its outer shell, and these drift together as a sea among the atoms — the familiar conductor
electron everyone learns about. The electric characteristic pushes on their charge, and
they move. That motion is the current, and it is the response that does the work at the
far end.
Now look one shell deeper, where the research proposes another set of electrons plays a
role. These sit in pairs, bound to the atom and not free to roam, and each pair carries a
tiny magnetism that normally rests balanced. The magnetic characteristic, in this model,
cannot push their charge along, but it can tilt those tiny magnets off balance. The
lattice springs them back. That tilting is what the research identifies as the
conductor's magnetic response. Standard physics does not assign this role to bound
electron pairs — it derives the magnetic field from the bulk current via Ampère's law
without requiring a shell-by-shell mechanism.
Both responses happen at every point the wave reaches, and both keep pace with the wave
at its own near-light speed. Look closely at why: it is not that the electrons or their
tilting carry the wave forward — we already saw they are far too slow for that. It is
that each one responds the instant the wave arrives. The wave sets the timing; the
electrons follow. Picture a stadium wave: it circles the arena in seconds, but no one
runs around the arena — each person simply stands as it reaches their seat. The pattern
races; the people stay home.
So there is one carrier and two responses. The force wave rides the lattice, carrying the
push. The free sea answers with motion — the current. The bound pairs answer with a
tilt — the magnetism. The wave carries no charge; it organizes what is already present
in the wire, delivering force point by point so the local electrons do the work where it
is needed.
**The research defines electricity as an electromagnetic force wave traveling through
a conductor.** A changing magnetic field at the source — what is called magnetic
flux — starts the wave and sets its amplitude — its strength. The wave rides the
conductor's lattice at near light speed. The electrons do not travel the wire; each
shifts a small distance back and forth as the wave passes, and no charge is shipped
from source to load. As the wave passes each point, its electric characteristic pushes
the free outer-shell electrons into motion — the current — and, in the research's
model, its magnetic characteristic stresses the paired electrons in the next shell in,
tilting them slightly. That tilting creates the magnetic field measured on the outside
of the wire. One carrier, two local responses, each following the wave at its own
speed.
Standard physics agrees that the energy is carried by the electromagnetic field at near
light speed, not by drifting electrons. The key difference is where that field propagates:
standard physics places the energy in the field around the wire, guided by the
conductor's boundary conditions; the research places it in a force wave riding the
lattice structure inside the wire. Both models agree on the observable outcomes — the
speed, the current, the external magnetic field.
The force wave begins as a conversion. At the generator, the changing magnetic field —
the flux — sweeps past the wire. The research proposes that the flux strikes the bound
electrons one shell in from the outer sea, in the third shell. It moves them only a very
small distance, but it moves them. The lattice that anchors them springs them back. That
small driven motion against the anchor is, in this model, the conversion: the third-shell
electrons compress, then decompress, and a force wave is born. The same thing happens
when a rock hits water: the impact makes the ripple. Standard physics describes the same
conversion through Faraday's law: the changing magnetic flux induces an electric field in
the conductor, which drives the current — without specifying which electron shell
responds first.
The lattice itself does not move. It is the base, and a base holds rather than travels; it
holds the struck electrons so they can be driven and recover. The outer sea is not struck
here either — it is pushed later, by the wave that follows, and that push is the current.
And note what gets struck in the research's model: the flux lands on the shell that
carries the bound magnets — the magnetically responsive electrons. The electric and
magnetic characters are joined from the first instant, which is why the wave is
electro-magnetic from birth. From there the force wave rides the lattice down the wire.
*Related notes: Correction 004 (the two waves in a wire; the lattice as base),
Research Note 016 (the magnetic response — the bound-pair tilting),
Research Note 025 (structure and flow — the two-terminal roles),
and Research Note 042 (the persistent current problem — superconductor evidence
for the force wave model). Two items remain
pending that this note touches: the rework of Correction 003 (the photon is not "one
cycle"), and the Note 016 Section 6 clarification separating the sea's kinetic flow from
the bound pairs' magnetic response.*
© 2026 David R. Young — Spectrum Energy Research Foundation
© 2026 David R. Young — Spectrum Energy Research Foundation
Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 for research and education. Commercial use requires a separate license from Spectrum Energy Research Foundation. Contact: secharts@proton.me