What particles cause electrical energy?

Answer 1

In a fundamental sense, no particle causes electricial energy. Energy (electrical or otherwise) is not a particle, but a transient property of particles, though Einstein's special relativity of 1905 included a relation between mass (which some particle shave) and energy. This is the famous E = mc^2 equation. The primary issue in thinking about energy is how particles acquire and lose energy.

If one can convert one particle or particle combination to another, and the second has less mass than the first, energy will be released. To the contrary, if the second has more moss than the first, then energy will be required to drive the change. In the case of hydrogen + hydrogen = helium, a small amount of mass is lost and appears as energy. In fact, this is fusion, and is the reaction which fuels most stars; it's also the reaction at the heart of a thermonuclear bomb, the H-bomb. Atoms more massive than iron all require energy when they are formed from smaller atoms joining together, and it is believed that the only place where there is sufficient energy to do so is in the interior of stars, released into interstellar space when those stars go nova (ie, explode) at the end of their lives. Thus, the heavy atoms on Earth, some of them part of our very tissues, are literally stardust.

In the case of fission, it is large atoms (eg, uranium or plutoinium) which split into smaller atoms (eg, barium or lead) and in so doing loss the energy which was added to make them in the centers of long done stars. It's released as energy when the atom splits. This is the fission reaction, used in atomic bombs and nuclear power plants.

More unusually, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle establishes limits on what can be know about the energy and position of small particles, such as electrons or atoms. The idea is, basically, that any measurement of the position of a particle will change its energy, and vice versa, with the result that both cannot be known with any accuracy simultaneously. If this is true, and every test has shown that it is, then one might have a pair of particles (eg, an electron and an anti-electron (aka positron)) appear in ordinary space ("from nothing, as it were), exist breifly, and then annihilate each other. If it happens sufficiently quickly (nanoseconds or less..., and determined by Heisenburg's Uncertainty relation), they will not violate any laws of physics, such as the various conservation laws. This creation and destruction of particles is sometimes called quantum foam, and there is some theoretical possiblity that there may be a way to collect energy from the phenomena. It's sometimes called zero point energy.

Stephen Hawking made one of the most significant discoveries of modern [physics when he noticed the possibility that the quantum foam phenomena might cause radiation from black holes, something which had been thought impossible. He showed that small black holes would radiate more intensely than larger ones and so very small black holes, if created somehow, would not exist for very long as they would loss energy rapidly and would essentially evaporate. Hawking radiation was a considerable surprise and it changed black hole physics greatly.

All energy has a quality, rather hard to explain, called entropy. It may be thought of as 'intensity' without confusing things too much. In a practical sense, only high entropy energy is useful, for in use the entropy is always reduced, and so must have been there in the first place. Very low entropy energy is, essentially, heat -- ie, physical motion of particles. Fast moving particles have higher temperatures, slow moving particles lower temperatures. Because the multitudinous jiggling of particle in contact eventually evens out, heat energy always flows from hot (fast motion) to cool (slower motion) particles. This is one of the fundamental Laws of Thermodynamics. When taken to the extreme, the entire universe is expected to eventually be at the same low termparature, useful work will be impossible (there being no high entropy (ie, intensity) energy still available); All particles will have equivalent amounts of energy, and be jiggling about thesame way. This is usually called the Heat Death of the Universe, but it will be some 10s of billions of years in the future by all present estimations.

In the special case of electricity, some high entropy energy is exploited to cause a changing magnetic field near a closed conducting loop (eg, by rotating a magnet because a steam turbine, or falling water, forces it to rotate). That magentic field will cause electrically charged particles in the conductor to move, or attempt to do so. As electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than are the protons in the heavy nucleus of atoms, electrons will move more readily; in the s[pecial case of metallic conductors, electrons are especially easy to get into motion. Since one moving electron is repelled by the identical electrical charge in any electron it encounters, there will be a net motion of electrons within the conductor loop. No one electron will move very far, but the cumulative effect of one electron pushing on the next which pushed on the next, ... will be the movement of electrical charge within the loop. If there is a motor in the cirucit the carefully arranged electrical fields caused by the moving charges can be used to generate mechanical motion.