Are the direction of negative charges and conventional current in a conductor the same?

Answer 1

Conventional current is the effective direction of positive charge. When in a metal the negative charged electrons are moving in one direction, the conventional positive current is in the other direction.

Answer 2

Short Answer:

The convention for the definition of current is the same direction as the flow of positive charge carrying current. Metals usually conduct through the motion of negative electrons, so motion is in the direction opposite to the conventional current direction. Some materials, such as ionic liquids, can have positive charge carriers as well as negative and in such a material motion of positive charge carriers is in the same direction as conventional current and the negative charge carriers are the opposite.

Longer Answer:

If you say that a current of 1 Ampere is flowing in a metal wire with a direction pointed due West, then the actually process that is occurring is the transport of negative electrons in the direction East.

The discovery that there was something called charge and the discovery that one could create current as moving charge occurred before anyone knew the nature of the particles that carried the charge. It was in the mid 1700s that Benjamin Franklin was doing his famous work on electricity and at this time he introduced the terms positive and negative to describe properties associated with electric charge. This was a century and a half before electrons were characterized as charge carriers. The decision on what is positive and negative was arbitrary and could just as easily been the opposite.

As an aside, there are plenty of examples in nature where positive charge carriers are moving and are thus current flowing in the same direction as convention defines as positive. This is usually ionic motion in liquids or nuclei in plasma or "holes" in semiconductors or some other form of motion of positive charge. So, positive charge motion as a current does happen but not as obviously as the flow of electrons in wires.

Answer 3

No, the direction of negative charges in a conductor is opposite to the direction of conventional current. Negative charges flow from higher potential to lower potential, whereas conventional current flows from lower potential to higher potential.