Why Stick With the Positive-to-Negative Convention?
3. The Pragmatic Perspective
Now, you might be wondering, “If it’s wrong, why don’t we just change it?” Great question! The answer, as with many things in life, boils down to practicality and inertia. As we mentioned earlier, the convention is deeply embedded in electrical engineering principles, equations, and circuit analysis techniques. Changing it would require rewriting textbooks, retraining engineers, and updating countless software programs. The sheer scale of the task makes it, well, impractical.
Furthermore, for many calculations and applications, the direction of current flow isn’t as important as the magnitude of the current. Whether you think of positive charges moving one way or negative charges moving the other, the overall effect on the circuit is the same. It’s like saying you drove 10 miles to work; it doesn’t really matter which direction you were facing when you left home.
Also, keep in mind that the conventional current model works perfectly well for understanding most electrical phenomena. It only becomes truly important to consider electron flow when dealing with semiconductors, where the movement of both electrons and “holes” (the absence of electrons, which act like positive charges) contributes to the current. So, for many everyday applications, the conventional model is perfectly adequate.
Essentially, we’re stuck with it. It’s a historical artifact, a bit like the QWERTY keyboard layout. Is it the most efficient layout? Probably not. But it’s what we’re used to, and changing it would cause more problems than it would solve.