[it_does_follow]

> some electricity

I think the key part of the controversy is the word "some".

In the original Veritasium video it pretty strongly implies that enough energy to light the bulb, i.e. virtually all the electricity, is traveling instantaneously a short distance rather than "through" the wire.

A big part of that video is to essentially say you're wrong if you understand electrons moving through the wire as how electricity works.

The video posted here tells a different story which is essentially that the mental model of electrons flowing isn't that far off, but there is a bit of nuance when you take into account fields.

This is sort of a persistent problem with "edutainment". I generally enjoy Veritasium, but this is clearly a case where the education component is weakened in order to increase the "wow!" factor of the video.

[iraqmtpizza]

>you're wrong if you understand electrons moving through the wire as how electricity works

in direct current, how does charge move from one terminal to another if it's not carried by electrons (which often act as waves)?

[naasking]

Moving charge isn't how power transfer in electricity mainly works, that's the point. Moving electrons is less than half of the story.

[XorNot]

This is an oversimplification as well though, because the model for current flow is exactly based on moving electrons and that works just fine to predict results.

The battery in the experiment is explicitly based on chemistry which is exactly described as electrons being moved around.

[tsimionescu]

It mostly works that way, but not exclusively: the moving electrons in one circuit create an electro-magnetic field that can induce currents in other nearby conductors that are not part of the same circuit.