The high resistance piece of wire in incandescent light bulbs glows as a result of electrons incoming through a low resistance material being squeezed through (bombard electrons that don’t want to be moved in) the high resistance material with a certain pressure (voltage). We are using the high resistance material to usurp (convert into heat and then into light) the kinetic energy of the electrons in the low resistance material (commonly copper wire).
We do the same thing with electrical heating elements and microphones.
Are we also doing this in electrical appliances from which we don’t expect a certain “end product” (heat, light, sound)? For instance, computers. When we were still using actual physical relays to build logic gates, I can imaging electron flow being converted into the energy (eletrco magnetism?) required to actuate/move the switch inside the relay. But what about today’s transistors? The processing units inside CPUs and GPUs heat up, but that’s a side effect of something I don’t understand. We are not trying to reap that heat. We are after manipulating groups transistors into expressing boolean logic by either giving them a voltage or not.
I know very little of electricity, so please do correct any incorrect assumptions! I’m very eager to learn! 😊💡
You are right about kinetic energy having low effect. However, in microelectronics becomes an issue, called electromigration, where the material laters are so thin that this small effect of electrons on metal atoms (the electron wind force) causes erosion, basically, movement of atoms.
And the effects on the micro wires are. really something. This errosion takes time of course, but not as long and the effect rises exponentially at the end because the current density increases.
It kinda blew my mind during my elec. eng. studies. Anyway, just wanted to donate my two cents on this matter.