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Why electric current does not obeys laws of vector addition?

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Why electric current does not obeys laws of vector addition?

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  1. Because it is a non-vectorial quantity  


  2. First check your grammar. "Does not obeys" doesn't make a sense at all in English. If any other language you know seriously without grammatical flaws, make us learn that. We would be contacting you using that only.

    Electric current is a rate of flow of charge which is mathematically devised as current I=dq/dt where dq is the amount of charge flows in a short time dt. Charge is nothing but the presence or absence of electrons. Electrons as a whole do not constitute any direction. Again, charge is also not flowing towards a particular direction as like the heat energy doesn't flow towards a scrupulous direction or you may say the current of water through streams is also not following any exacting direction.

    The heat energy only flows if there's any difference of temperature between source and destination. Same way, the water current is also flowing only when there’s a difference between the height of the source and the sink. The same is to be told for electric current. Whence there’s a disparity between voltages (amount of electric charge) of two points, then only electric current (stream of electric charges) flows from high voltage towards low voltage without following a pre-decided straight-line path. Whatever is the path, charges or, to be precise, electrons flow from higher collection of charges to a lower one. It's customary to assume that charges or electrons flow from lower voltage to higher voltage and, reversely as current is thought of the flow of positive charges (absence of electrons), it's flowing from the higher to the lower one without following a straight-line. Thus, no question should come about the vector addition for a scalar quantity like electric current.

    If anything seems vague, I'm always there at your service.




  3. Because it's not a vectorial magnitude but a scalar one so it's not characterized by a direction and a module.

  4. While electric current is scalar, an electric field is a vector because it's a force, and force is a vector.  Vector operations apply.

    http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/GBSSCI/PH...

  5. Electric current means how much charge goes through a point in unit time. Amount of charge is a scalar quantity and also time is scalar quantity. Therefore, electric current is scalar quantity.

    As an example, suppose that 10 people reach a junction from one direction A and 20 people reach the same junction from another direction B. Then they all proceed in the direction C. How many proceeded in C? Answer is 10+20 = 30. We do scalar addition here to add the number of people.

    Likewise, we do scalar addition for amount of charge.

      

  6. We define electric current in a closed circuit at any point as the net charge passing across that point. In what direction it crosses is of no importance.  Suppose the circuit is made of flexible copper wire passing through the point then I can go on twisting the wire in any curve anyway I like so that the tangent to the curve at the point has different directions. The current through the circuit at that point will not change, showing that the direction of current is not significant and definite at all. The value of the current is the ratio of the total emf in the circuit and the total resistance of the circuit. In first Kirchhoff's law also we define current going towards a point as positive and away from the point as negative the direction by which the charge reaches the point is of no significance. Hence current is treated as scalar and not as vector.  So the question of its following vector law of addition  does not arise.  

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