Protons and Current

Dear Don,

After reading Tony G7ETW’s letter in the October edition I thought I would re-read Eric Edwards’ article to savour his alleged faux pas but, far from finding it, I note that Eric does explicitly state that in a metallic conductor the protons do not move. His reputation surely remains intact?

Also, Tony is confining his attention to metallic conductors but there are numerous instances of protons (aka hydrogen ions) acting as moving charge carriers − aqueous acids e.g. in lead-acid cells are a good example.

However, I cannot let Eric completely off the hook! In his October article, he decodes a colour code of black-brown-black as 0.1Ω. It is, in fact, 1Ω (0.1Ω would be blackbrown-gold, gold being the 0.1 multiplier). Richard Hill G8THE Hastings