Power (watts) and voltage (volts) are not the same thing.
The water analogy is most useful at this level (despite being wrong in most respects, it instils a basic working understanding good enough for the householder).
Think of a waterfall. Wait, think of two: a very high one with just a thin stream of water, and a low one, maybe a foot high with a torrent of water flowing over it (a weir).
Voltage is the height of the waterfall: a stream of water at the bottom of a very high waterfall will feel more painful than a stream from a much lower one.*
Current is analogous to the amount of water flowing over the waterfall - the river's current.
Multiplying voltage by current, you get power: the ability of the waterfall to do useful work.
(A very high waterfall with hardly any water flowing over it won't be able to turn a water wheel very quickly, and nor will a very low waterfall with a lot of water flowing over it. You need both voltage and current to do useful work.)
Re the movement of electrons: in fact they move very slowly on average under the influence of an electric field, but by their "bouncing against" their neighbours, the electric impulse
is transmitted quickly through the conductor.
* An alternative analogue for voltage is water pressure, and indeed in some languages voltage is referred to as pressure.
In Turkish voltage is known both as voltaj and gerilim. Gerilim means tension, coming from the verb germek, which means to stretch. I think tension is a good analogy, and fits with the idea of potential and springs.
THAT is what high tension wires are?! I've always seen it in the context of the massive transmission lines, so I thought it meant that the wires themselves were under high tension from their weight.
Also "high tension power lines," which being heavy catenaries presumably are in high mechanical tension, but must surely have gotten that name from the voltage = tension thing.
German has this too: voltage = Spannung = tension.
This must go right back to the earliest writings on voltage as a concept.
In spanish "Voltage" (i.e. voltaje) is "tensión" (tension) or "diferencia de potencial" (potential difference).
A problem here is that "tension" communicates a concept, but "voltage" communicates nothing, it's only a derivation of the unit used, or perhaps something to do with Alessandro Volta, a gentleman most students these days hadn't the pleasure to meet.
A simmilar problem in spanish was "amperaje" (amperage) which is not much heard any more except very colloquially among electricians; the standard term is "corriente" (current).
However, the units and letters are somewhat confusing for the students:
V(oltage) = E(lectric field?), unit is Volt, is refered as tension of potential differece.
A(mp) = I(ntensity), unit is Ampere, is refered as corriente.
P(ower), unit Watt, is consistent, as is refered as potencia (power).
In Russian it is напряжение. Which can be loosely translated as tension, but more in the sense of a feeling than of a characteristic of a rope or a spring (that's натяжение).
In some languages voltage is called "pressure". I think this is also a good analogy because just like how you get energy from a pneumatic system by exploiting a pressure difference, you get energy from an electrical system by exploiting a potential difference
That analogy would work. In that case voltage (volts) would be the tension on a rubber band, current (amps) would be the width of the rubber band, ad Power (watts) would be the product of tension times the diameter (or mass).
> Re the movement of electrons: in fact they move very slowly on average under the influence of an electric field, but by their "bouncing against" their neighbours, the electric impulse is transmitted quickly through the conductor.
When you apply a voltage across a conductor it generates an electric field, and the electric field propagates at the speed of light (it’s an EM wave). I could be wrong, but I think that is why the electric impulse transmits quickly even though the drift velocity is so slow.
Each electron moves slowly, but they all move approximately in the same direction st the same time, so the net effect is to move charge berry quickly, right?
Like a bucket brigade where everyone passes water to the person on their left. You move a bucket 3 feet per second, but together everyone moves a bucket worth of water a hundred feet per second.
No, this is the whole "confusing the wave and the medium" problem. Drift velocity (the technical name for "how fast are electrons moving through this wire") has effectively nothing at all to do with the propagation of electrical properties through a circuit.
If electrical properties propagated at the drift velocity, there'd be an appreciable delay when you flipped your light switch.
The water analogy is most useful at this level (despite being wrong in most respects, it instils a basic working understanding good enough for the householder).
Think of a waterfall. Wait, think of two: a very high one with just a thin stream of water, and a low one, maybe a foot high with a torrent of water flowing over it (a weir).
Voltage is the height of the waterfall: a stream of water at the bottom of a very high waterfall will feel more painful than a stream from a much lower one.*
Current is analogous to the amount of water flowing over the waterfall - the river's current.
Multiplying voltage by current, you get power: the ability of the waterfall to do useful work.
(A very high waterfall with hardly any water flowing over it won't be able to turn a water wheel very quickly, and nor will a very low waterfall with a lot of water flowing over it. You need both voltage and current to do useful work.)
Re the movement of electrons: in fact they move very slowly on average under the influence of an electric field, but by their "bouncing against" their neighbours, the electric impulse is transmitted quickly through the conductor.
* An alternative analogue for voltage is water pressure, and indeed in some languages voltage is referred to as pressure.