SUPER CONFUSED =\

[f4cepl4nt]

http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jfuller/test2/diodesB.htm

on that page, if you scroll down there is a picture of a grey box with little red lines on it.
below that there is a tiny little schematic.

I'm having a LOT of trouble getting all this through my brain..I'm a complete newbie to electronics (other than 4 months of it in grade 9 science), and for some reason I'm having a lot of trouble understanding the way electrons move in a circuit.

You would think that they move from negative to positive right? So then how does that circuit work that i linked to you? Because the way I see it, the resistor isnt protecting the LED from anything because the electrons get to it after they get to the LED.

I don't know, maybe im just completely stupid. But it just seems to make sense to me that that would be true. And another question, on some circuits they have one wire leading to something called +9V then no other wire...where do you connect the -ve end of the battery to?

Sorry to bullet you guys with stupid questions but as i said im a complete newb

[hotwaterwizard]

Is this the picture you are looking at?


They have written books about the way Electricity travels.
Lightning for example goes from the ground to the cloud.
Everyone thinks it is the other way around. But, if you film it with a slow motion camera you will see that it goes up not down.



http://www.sunblock99.org.uk/sb99/people/DMackay/lightning.html
Here is more on how electrons flow.
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_1/7.html
http://www.mi.mun.ca/~cchaulk/eltk1100/ivse/ivse.htm
http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/Power/2-whats-electron-flow.html

[Codyhtml]

the resistor protects the led anyway because it limits how much curent can travel through it like on a highway if you go over a bridge that can handel only 40mph but the speed limit is 50 and you are going the speed limit then a few feet after the bridge the speed limit changes to 20 you will only be able to travel over the bridge at about 20 because the cars will pile up and have to slow down hope i helped if this confuses you more just ignore my post ;D

[Guest Alun]

f4cepl4nt,
Cheak out hotwaterwizard's links they're very informative, but I'll just summarize their content for you:

Scientists used to think current traveled from positive to negitive but later on experiments were done that showed the opposite is true, the current flows from negative to positive. This gave rise to two ways of illustrating current flow, conventional (often called hole flow which is positive to negitive) and electron flow (negitive to positive).