Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/85400/moving-to-open-plan-offices-makes-employees-less-productive-less-happy-and-more-likely-to-get-sick/# <comment><USER3> Anyone who has worked in enough office environments for a while will recognize that the "best" environment is a flexible one. Sometimes it's working in the open, sometimes a quiet office with the door closed, sometimes at home or a coffee shop.

When I took a mgmt role as VP/Engnring at a firm a few years ago, the first thing I did was assess and address morale, which was not good. One of the obvious things was that the staff didn't like the militaristic-layout of desks, being on display to others in the organization who had cozy and private retreats to use.

The CEO freaked out when I told him we were moving to the opposite side of the office floor (we had a full floor in a standard big-city downtown office building). When we moved over, we had our choice of cubes, open areas (not desks, but full-on tables) and quiet corners. Product management hated it because they "had to walk over to see what was going on". It didn't take a lot to figure out the source of frustration with the office environment for the engineering team. After that, I was able to take on the frustrations of the product management group since they could no longer _easily_ impact the engineering team.

As it turned out, the engineering team didn't mind working in any combination of those situations, as long as they could kind of pick-and-choose over time. And, wouldn't you know it, productivity went up -- considerably.

<comment><USER4> Ultimately, in my experience, it always seems to come down to "how do we keep the non-technical people from meddling with the engineers?" This is as much about org structure as it is office layout

<comment><USER5> This is one of the lessons from Peopleware. It's not so much noise in the background but noise unrelated to the job duties. Being in a room of developers usually has less impact than having marketing, sales, etc. collocated as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This topic is discussed at length in Peopleware:

<http://www.librarything.com/work/17188>

"If your organization is anything like those studied in our last three annual surveys, the environmental trend is toward less privacy, less dedicated space and more noise. Of course the obvious reason for this is cost. A penny saved on the workspace is a penny earned on the bottom line, or so the logic goes. Those who make such a judgement are guilty of performing a cost/benefit study without the benefit of studying the benefit."

The book was first published in 1987 and apparently has not been very influential.

<comment><USER7> > The book was first published in 1987 and apparently has not been very > influential.

You think that's bad? Brooks first published The Mythical Man-Month in 1975 and I don't think those lessons have ever sunk in, either.

<comment><USER8> 99% of the managers probably haven't even heard if somebody called Fred Brooks ever existed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really struggle to get in the 'zone' where I can do the creative aspects of software engineering (e.g. researching graph databases like neo4j and determining if our startup can benefit from it) when I'm in an open environment. I have been diagnosed with ADD for the past 8 years, but am working towards a medication free approach to dealing with it.

Open spaces really hurt my productivity because my mind naturally tries to keep track of all the conversations going on around me. This ADD wired brain helped make me a great waiter, but it's hard to explain to bosses/founders why I prefer to work in a quiet environment with as few people around as possible whenever I'm not simply cranking out code that takes no thought.

Most of my bosses have been very accommodating at first, but each time the scenario ends up where management feels like my isolation is a sign of not wanting to be a team player and is harming the morale of those programmers that look up to me.

I really don't know what the right answer is to this dilemma, but for me, at least, the trend towards an open plan offices is stifling my ability to perform at a consistently high level.

Edit: to those replying below, thanks for the suggestion. Thankfully my employer has no policy against headphone usage, so I do get some help from that. One thing many people don't realize about ADD is that a loss of focus can be triggered through other senses such as seeing movement out of the corner of my eyes. Sound is definitely the most distracting element, but an environment with a lot of movement can be almost as bad in my case.

<comment><USER10> I hate to sound like I'm trivializing your disorder, but have you tried a good pair of closed-ear headphones? I sit in a room of 40 or 50 chatty computer folks, and everything is silent when I put on my Sennheiser headphones. It lets be effectively choose whether or not I want to be distracted by sound, which I do sometimes (hearing conversations I want to be a part of it quite important to me).

<comment><USER11> [http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SE210-Sound-Isolating- Earphone/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Shure-SE210-Sound-Isolating- Earphone/dp/B0013JT3XC)

Those effectively eliminate auditory ADD in an open environment. Nothing has been more effective than these for me.

<comment><USER12> I have a pair of Bose Quiet Comfort 15's, supposedly one of the best noise canceling headphones you can buy. While it eliminates alot of the noise, noise still gets in.

<comment><USER13> Earphones that actually block sound are far superior to noise canceling headphones that degrade the sound quality of whatever you're listening to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've worked in every possible configuration, and I've watched teams work in every possible configuration.

I don't like open-plan, but it tentatively appears to be most effective for organizations as a whole. Some initial conclusions:

\- We'd be wise to distinguish what we'd all _like_ to have as an office from what actually functions best in a larger system. It is erroneous to think that simply because you like something means it's always the best policy for everybody. Sometimes local non-optimizations need to be made to optimize the system as a whole.

\- Open-plan environments are nowhere near being a _determining_ factor in team performance, but they can be an important add-on. So sure, if your company is too cheap for offices, treat teams like slaves, and just wants to cram as many people possible into the smallest space? Then that's going to suck. But that's going to suck anyway. I'd just be really careful about confusing "stuff I think is cool" from "stuff that works the best for everybody concerned" I'd also be careful about over-generalizing. A big hunk of this is team, project, company, technology, and building specific.

\- As long as you're adapting, you could end up with any kind of office space. But just as an informed guess, co-located open plan is where I'd start, then adapt from there.

\- The worse thing you can do is start with a pre-conceived notion of what works and didn't and then try to force reality to conform to it.

<comment><USER15> Couldn't agree more. What people _complain_ about is not necessarily an indication of what's _not working_.

My last two gigs have been open-plan, and I prefer it much more than closed- cube spaces. If your team is working as it should, and is in close proximity to project/product management, with a good process and a healthy level of trust between the stakeholders and between the various engineers, then in my experience open-plan is far better, because the quality of communication is high, the general focus of the team is high, and there's less background noise "distraction", because the cross-talk is usually relevant and on-task, and has a higher likelihood of being pertinent to the job at hand. Open plan offices work well when the team is already working well.

However, if there's broken processes, unfocussed coworkers, and a general level of distrust between team members or across teams, then the background chatter becomes exponentially more distracting and frustrating. Unfortunately most teams tend towards the latter and not the former.

In other words -- in my limited, anecdotal experience (last 5 years, two large open-plan teams; 10 years before that in closed or hybrid), high-functioning teams tend to thrive on the cross-talk and constant communication that open plan creates organically. Lower-functioning teams on the other hand have done better when the natural barriers of walls and closed doors limit unnecessary distractions and create healthier boundaries.

So it's not surprising to me that the study shows more instances of teams unhappy with open plans; it's certainly not for everybody. But the best teams I've been on have absolutely _thrived_ in that environment.

<comment><USER16> > high-functioning teams tend to thrive on the cross-talk and constant > communication that open plan creates organically.

I wonder how programmers in such environments can get in the "zone" and stay in it for extended periods of time, if they are being "constantly communicated with".

<comment><USER15> I'm ADD to the core, and I find it actually easier to zone out and _code_ with a low-level background noise, "coffee-shop" style. Large spikes in noise are a problem, and also non-relevant conversations that pull _everyone's_ attention off-task, but on the open teams I've been on, in general this has been the exception not the rule.

My experience at large tables has been that good coders and PMs will actually _IM_ a developer when they need to ask a question -- I do this all the time even when I'm sitting 2 feet from the guy I need to talk to: "let me know when you have a sec to talk about X", etc.

Again, that's evidence of a team that's generally on-task and communicating well -- a cultural quality that is itself harder to find than not.

<comment><USER17> I prefer instant messaging to start a conversation... it's asynchronous. You can ignore it for a little while if you need just a couple minutes more of flow state

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I don't prefer open office plans, I think it needs to be emphasized that not all open office plans are equal.

There are compartmentalized open plans, where a specific team or division is grouped together in close proximity, and then you have some form of the "kitchen sink", where any number of teams (if not the whole company) is just thrown into a room.

The latter is _extremely_ unpleasant, IMHO. Being constantly disrupted by the loud side chatter that inevitably comes out of another group (e.g. marketing, finance, sales, etc.) is infinitely more distracting than ancillary chatter that is relevant to a specific team / department. In addition, obviously, the more open a plan is the more physical distractions are present which doesn't help matters either.

<comment><USER19> You also have to consider how closely packed everyone is. At my last job we had an open plan office for the four people in my group but we were all about 20 feet apart and it was great. It was easy to communicate, but it wasn't distracting. Having lots of tiny conference rooms for talking to people or taking phone calls is also very important for open plan offices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Thanks to open-plan office I developed anxiety, high-blood pressure and stress. I could not concentrate in the office and I had to finish most of my work at home over evenings. I nearly divorced thanks to open-plan office.

I already quit 3 long term jobs a few weeks after company moved to open-plan. At end I just had to start my own business. Now I am single-handily competing with multi-billion companies (and I dare to say with good success).

Open-plan comes with lot of bullsh*t. But at end it is just about a few bucks which company moves from operating cost to management bonuses.

Many developers care about stuff like free soda. I would strongly recommend to care about your working environment and mental health. It takes about 10 years of stress-free work to develop and reach your full technical potential. Working for peanuts and burning-out after 15 years is really bad carier plan.

<comment><USER21> As an Agile evangelist I thought open-plan was the way to go but now I realize collaboration tools such as IM, Campfire, Hipchat, etc can provide such social benefits while allowing the developer to isolate themselves and focus when needed.

I personally can work in any kind of environment, but I prefer it quiet. Headphones help when in open-plan places but I noticed it takes me longer to get focused in such places. I now reject job offers were I would get anything less than a private cubicle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In the span of 4 years, I went from a cube farm, to an office, to taking almost a year off and being by myself at home, to an entirely open-plan. It took a couple of weeks to get used to but I really like the open-plan. I enjoyed being by myself at home alone tremendously and didn't miss the social interaction at all, since I IM with most of my friends anyway, but I have to say I do like the open-plan now. My team is very social, I very much like everyone on the team, and I get to interact with my teammates a lot more, and if I need some solitude I can move to a smaller room (we're all laptop-based).

We do respect each other's space though, so most times it gets as quiet as a library, and even though my teammate is just on the other side of the table from me, he will IM me instead of just looking past the monitor and talk to me. It's usually quiet, but closer to lunch or near the end of the day, we play StarCraft 2, start chattering a bit more, and it's generally a bit looser.

For the most part, we don't work remotely, but the VP of Engineering insists that if one of us is even possibly sick, to stay at home and not infect others.

It's definitely a different set of "rules", but I really do enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Was just having a discussion on this topic with a friend a couple nights ago. Seems that "management" and "HR" always seem to have traditional desks and offices with closable doors. Always. For software developers, they often get lumped with the same desk/working environments that people doing call center or phone support work get.

It got me thinking _why_ that might be, and I had a thought I hadn't had before. Management types typically have their days broken up in to short 30-60 minute blocks - that's their standard work process - meeting, meeting, meeting, planning, etc. I don't think they can really understand people focusing for 2-3 hours at a stretch, and that there's often a big increase in productivity for some people working under those conditions.

Thought-workers are somewhat alone in this, and because the people who make office seating decisions don't work that way, they can not fathom anyone else might _need_ to work that way (except, of course, they still need their doors to be closed for quiet/private work conditions).

<comment><USER24> There's more to it than that. Management and HR people need to have conversations that not everyone else is privy to. Having everyone listening to a coworker being asked by her boss to wear more appropriate clothing to the office is just asking for a lawsuit, as is a conversation between HR and an employee discussing leave for an embarrassing medical problem.

Of course you can have small conference rooms for those kinds of conversations, but if it's a significant part of the job an office just makes sense.

<comment><USER25> The thing is that I think healthy teams need to have those conversations as well. I.e. ones that not everyone is privy too. Team cohesion requires trust and I found the inability to have private conversations easily is a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Six years ago I designed a mixed-mode alcove based office plan. Long conference table with 12 chairs. On opposite sides are four to six offices just large enough for pair programming, doors facing the conference table.

For heads down go to your office and close the door. 1:1 collaboration go join your partner. Max3 cram on in.

Passive collaboration open your door. Larger team meet at conf table. Active teamwork move with laptop out to table.

Large screen on wall at end of table. This neighborhood is repeated over and over again.

Collocate teams in alcoves. Go visit other alcoves when you need to. Touchdown or camp at whatever teams space you need to be at.

This design was rejected at my local office rebuild. But a year later was taken up at another facility. It won someone architectural awards.

Me? I get to enjoy its productivity multiplier every time I visit that facility. Anyone who experiences it comments on it being the best arrangement they have ever seen.

Any other time? When i need to work from the local office I am in low wall cubicle hell from thanks to our expert architects.

<comment><USER27> Have you written a blog post or something more about this setup? I'd certainly like to know more about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Open plans benefit only two categories:

1) Lazy managers or PMs, who either won't expend the effort to use ascertain on their own how things are progressing (code review, ticket / task lists, reports), or don't have the discipline to actually manage without continuously interrupting with questions about things they should already know.

2) Bean counting finance or facilities types, who foolishly look at cost as the primary design factor largely ahead of productivity and work _quality_ (not quantity).

Giving people an environment where they can focus when needed (an "office") along with areas where collaboration can occur when desired ("war rooms") is the only approach that gives people the opportunity to excel.

I am extremely doubtful that the time and effort to go find someone in their workspace is more time consuming than the cumulative impact of constant distraction, be it visual or auditory. If it is the case, then these people can team up in a single office or work room.

Especially in tech, where more and more companies proclaim they provide choice and flexibility in tools, workstations, and even nutrition, forcing everyone to work in one, unfiltered common area is equivalent to putting them in a henhouse.

TL;DR - open plan offices are trendy bullshit to avoid spending enough for a comfortable workspace.

</comment><comment><USER29> Agreed. I find it very odd that software engineers make $100k+ yet aren't even given an office or private work space.

The cost is not the reason because open floor plan offices in downtown SF aren't exactly "cheaper" than renting in an already established office suite. The reason is the insecurities of management, combined with the fashion/groupthink aspect of silicon valley startup CEOs (herp derp, facebook does it! Startup X does it! It's the thing to do!)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm wondering why people even considered that kind of office layout.

Didn't anyone of them read the famous books of Tom DeMarco, such as "Peopleware"? Decades ago, DeMarco argued (IMHO very convincingly) for closed rooms to cut distractions - at least for thought workers. DeMarco even concluded that telephones are bad, especially if in the company's culture it's not socially accepted that people are free to ignore a phone call.

</comment><comment><USER31> As an interesting example, the people in charge at Facebook seem to be well aware of the downsides of open plan offices. They however consciously choose to lower engineer productivity in exchange for higher openness and visibility. It's actually refreshing how they don't try to pass it as "much better for the developer". It's better for the company as a whole, not so much for the individual: <http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3119> (starts around 11:35)

<comment><AUTHOR> Open plan is all about the brogrammer macho bullshit. The idea is that if you can't deal with 10+ hours of being on edge due to vertigo-inducing noise and open-back visibility, you're too old/lazy/weak to write code. It's total nonsense and the sooner that attitude dies, the better.

<comment><USER32> I agree with this. It carries with it a bit of a sense of youthful superiority, and leads countless kids to waste away their twenties all to make someone else rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there any conclusive evidence of causation, as opposed to just correlation?

Could it be, for example, that companies with worse management practices tend to adopt open-plan offices, but that it's actually the bad management practices causing stress, sickness, less productivity -- and that the open- plan offices have very little to do with it?

In environments as incredibly complex as office settings, it is particularly important to realize that correlation != causation.

<comment><USER34> You make a good point; an office is a complex system with many factors affecting workers. However, I do think the findings about increased sickness in open plan offices are very plausible. Communicable diseases, like colds or flu, would be a whole lot easier to spread when there's someone coughing or sneezing in your immediate vicinity over an extended period of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have worked in just about every office configuration imaginable: open office (my current job), everyone gets their own office, and cubicles.

Despite everyone hating them, I actually think cubicles are the best arrangement. The cubicle walls offer separation and let people focus and get more work done, but not so much that they stifle collaboration and communication (which everyone having their own office does).

Open office is by far the worst, I actually really hate it. So distracting, noisy, and for sure the least productive.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why do we need offices ? office-less is the new paper-less! with tools like google hangout and google glasses, it makes less and less sense everyday. Why come to the same physical space everyday and stare at the computer screens to do the work you can do from anywhere.

Offices were invented to reduce the transaction cost of communication between employees, which was true 20 years ago but not anymore. I guess we have to wait till the net generation moves in to management to be truly comfortable with the mobile workforce. The time of long tail of work environment is upon us.

<comment><USER37> I like my office. It's a place I go to do work. I love my job, but I also love to get away from my job, completely, when I step out the door of my office.

I've tried the work-from-anywhere thing and it sucks. It really just turns into work-all-the-time for me.

<comment><USER36> Its okay to like office and work there just don't force or enforce your co- workers and employees to do the same by assuming that they love their offices as much as you do. For example, May be you are that loud or annoying co-worker or extrovert who keep interrupting them from their work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of the challenges I face is on temperature. The HVAC unit on our building was not really designed to do even temperature control of an open 60 x 100' space. So we get warm and cold spots, and adjusting one can screw up the others. I've done a bit of research on it and their are two challenges for our particular system, one the number of mixers in the ceiling which can change air temperature and the way in which thermostats feed back into the system.

I suspect if you sat down with Lennox or Crane and said "we want to design an HVAC system that will work in this environment." they would come up with something very different than what we currently have. Sadly its going to take a bit to convince the landlord to rip out the old system and put in a new one.

<comment><USER39> Even worse in when you seem to be the only one that notices/cares about the problem - making you look like a whiny bitch or perfectionist that can't adapt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I actually like open plan, generally, with one caveat - I work from home one day a week. I like being generally available to help my colleagues with problems (and be helped by them), and I'm mostly-interruptible. This workflow does rely entirely on me having at least one day a week for which I can save up my really hard problems and just think uninterrupted.

Working from home is not a requirement - I'd also be happy with an open-plan arrangement where you could book an office for one day a week. The important factor is that every now and then I need some peace and quiet.

</comment><comment><USER41> At my last job we had a huge open-office floor plan. I was so uncomfortable in that situation I ended up in at a gastroenterologist multiple times before realizing I needed to change jobs. Haven't had a single GI issue since I left.

</comment><comment><USER42> I feel like I'm the only one that feels this way, but I far prefer open plan. I used to work at somewhere that had offices for everyone and I hated it. Maybe it's more productive, but it makes going to work hell since you don't see anyone the entire day. I much prefer having a more social environment where you can actually talk to people.

And good open plan offices will give you nooks and crannies to get away from the noise when you want to.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, we're definitely the minority. I used to be an office fan, and after having one for several years, am enjoying being back in an open plan.

There are definitely downsides to both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Water wet, sky blue, Pope Catholic, Bear excrement in forested areas

Knowledge workers of the past who have had money and power work in quiet campus colleges or oasis of calm like Londons Lincoln's Inn or Temple.

No power or influence - and work in chicken farms.

There is an advantage - for companies willing to put in the effort to make a sane work environment, to grow and support honesty and team support - <USER2> it's like being give. A free extra lap on the business marathon.

<comment><USER45> _"Knowledge workers of the past who have had money and power work in quiet campus colleges or oasis of calm like London's Lincoln's Inn or Temple."_

The average Oxford JCR isn't that calm, and both the Inns of Court support people who are performing in the open shout mosh pit that was the Georgian courtroom.

I take your well-made point, but somehow we need to _balance_ calm reflection with connection.

<comment><USER44> That kind of seems to be my point - raucous connection is great fun, as long as there is some area one controls to retreat to and capitalise on the connections made, and prepare.

Pixar has an open central area I believe (where the toilets are) deliberately to encourage people to connect when they leave their offices (where they can concentrate)

Campuses almost always have a central coffee / open area where "everyone meets up". All the Inns of court that I remember we're built around grassy courtyards, all encouraging an easy mixing without compromising office work

It is is suspect the real advantage of yammer or those web-IRC 37signal things - there is a "room" to go to that is social more than work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder what is the next evolutionary step in sequence: private office -> cubicle farm -> open plan office.

I think it will be empty tank inside retired oil tanker. It could dock a few miles of the coast, so no problems with property taxes and imigration permits.Thousands of developers would fit into single tanker. Also steel hull absorbs radio waves, so no unauthorized tweeting or surfing during working hours :-)

</comment><comment><USER47> The noise would drive me crazy. Earplugs would not even work with so many phones so close together. How can people program in that environment?

<comment><USER48> Coding from starbucks at the moment. It's definitely doable. Our office has an open floor plan and once in a while there are conversations I wish I could block out a little more effectively but it's not a daily frustration.

<comment><USER49> Yes, commenting on HN from starbucks is quite doable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I tend to enjoy the open plan. Our team has currently voluntarily moved to an open space within an otherwise cubicle-dominated workplace to facilitate better communication within the team. I can see issues with this layout when multiple teams are involved or team sizes are large, but I really like it for our small team (and I'd like to think the rest of the team would agree). I also feel like there definitely needs to be "individual spaces" where you can go and be not interrupted for a while, which we currently do not have. A flexible work schedule would probably do just as well.

Maybe it depends on the team and the personality types in it?

<comment><USER34> _"Maybe it depends on the team and the personality types in it?"_

That's exactly the case. Different people have different preferences. And if you have an inflexible work environment of a particular type, your company is losing access to all the talented people who hate that particular environment -- you're, in effect, making something like the ability to work in a noisy space a more important hiring criterion than the ability to write good code. (Maybe this is one of the reasons that companies feel there's a shortage of developers?)

The best approach might be to offer a choice to employees rather than having rigid policies like "everybody has to collaborate on a minute-by-minute basis in an open space", or "managers get offices and everyone else gets cubicles". Giving employees control over their individual working environments would go a long way toward making them feel valued by the company, even more than giving them free food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I believe it is very difficult to get works done in an open plan office. That seems too distraction prone. Noise cancellation headphones can get useful only if accompanied by an extended hood to guard vision to the screen. So that the programmer does not get distracted by any human movement nearby.

</comment><comment><USER52> Personally, in the past, an open office speeds up the rate at which I begun to dislike my co-workers, which lead to a dislike of my employment, and hence reduced how long I would stay in a job.

That image in the article of the women (could be men) all lined up like battery hens looks like my worst office night mare. You almost couldn't stretch your arms/wings with out assaulting your co-workers. Its considered bad form for animals to just exist like that, why is it OK for humans engaged in work?

</comment><comment><USER53> After nearly 25 years, I've worked in almost every known office layout. My opinions, based solely on my subjective experience:

\--open-plan offices can work great for small teams of maybe 4-6 max. Beyond five or six people though, productivity starts to drop significantly. Also, the people on the team have to like each other, be working on the same problem/goal, and have a comfortable environment (whiteboards, comfy armchairs/sofa, big table and comfy chairs, natural lighting through large windows). For a small, driven team, this is great.

\--private offices are my preferred choice for a larger, established organization. I want to be able to shut my door and work without the distractions of everyday office life invading my consciousness. I can focus when needed, be social when I want. More important, I can have my own private whiteboard.

\--cubicles are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea in that you get the illusion of privacy (but not really) along with the illusion of an open-plan (but not really).

\--work from home/home office. For the past 5 years, this is how I've worked with my own business. I like the privacy and the ability to get stuff done. But I miss socializing and brainstorming with others, and am finding myself in coffee shops more and more often, just for the social aspects.

One concept I'd like to experiment with is a hybrid "enclave" model, where larger private offices/rooms are set up for teams working on projects, or just people who like to work together. Maybe an external wall could open or close instead of a door if the team decides to be more social or focused.

<comment><USER54> Yeah, I'd really like to try offices in "pods" of 4-8 with a roll-up wall (like a garage door) on one side of each, opening into a private "team space". And maybe a roll-up wall on the public side, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Like so many things, it seems as though people are looking for "the one" best way of doing things. Obviously some people like cubicles. Some like offices. Some like open space. How about letting people choose?

<comment><USER45> And possibly change their choice from day to day depending on task. Could be expensive?

<comment><USER34> If it increases the productivity of a $100,000 per year employee by 10% (i.e., you could get the equivalent of an additional $100,000 employee for free for every ten employees you had), it could actually be very cost effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I wrote an article on my blog in January to the same effect: [http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-plan-offices-are-a- night...](http://jonblack.org/2013/01/29/open-plan-offices-are-a-nightmare/).

The funny thing is, in spite of all the signs, our office are knocking walls down to make rooms bigger!

<comment><USER34> Thanks, that five-minute TED talk in your article was very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I gave a talk on this topic [1], and about 60% of the audience was cheering and totally for this. But I got a small number of people coming up afterwards and saying they much preferred open plan. So I think there's definitely a downside: developers enjoy work less because it's less social, and less collaborate. I think overall the benefit is there though.

Does anyone know how much it costs to have private offices all round? My estimate was that a 1sqft/yr is $55 in SF right now, so the 100-150sqft for 1 open plan desk is $700, and you might need twice as much space to give people (small) private offices. Would love something more accurate though.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYk1YkCRuKQ&t=43m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYk1YkCRuKQ&t=43m17s)

<comment><USER58> There are people that want to collaborate with other people of the same skill level. But the majority of people that want to collaborate just don't know what they are doing and can't do their jobs. If people want a more social and collaborative job, maybe they shouldn't choose software developer as a career.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is true, I've never been to an office more sick than and open-plan office. HALF the office was off sick during 1 week in a flu season. It was unreal.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm certainly an open-office hater, it drives me absolutely batty. Open office with frequent phone calls throughout the day by your neighbors? I'd quit.

I do like small open offices when working closely with people on a team. But everyone in that office has to be working on the same project. This is the scenario where it can be great. Even in this case, though, there are some periods where you need to step away to a silo to do your own thing for awhile in my experience.

I have heard of some mythical working environments with both public and private working areas that allow people to move as they will. I guess this would be the optimal solution.

</comment><comment><USER61> I tend to agree with this article. My office went from a "bullpen" arrangement (team size cubicle areas) to and entirely open floor. To me the feeling is almost like a sweat-shop -- row after row of programmers working away.

While my team specifically tends to be pretty social, I've found other areas of the floor seem to be utterly silent, and in these the above feeling is even more solidified. We've been able to kind of avoid the feeling by finding a natural corner of the building that almost puts us back into that 'bullpen' environment.

</comment><comment><USER62> Microsoft got this right, and I expect they have the metrics to show it's true.

Some things have changed, though. Coders don't need a bookshelf when they can get a Safari subscription. Nobody needs a fixed-line phone. For 90% of coding a laptop is fast enough. So I would think that a "hotelling" style arrangement would work now, before, a coder might be holed up with a pile of books, big, heavy CRTs, and desktop computers. Now that Drive has a "scan" command, even the whiteboard can come along with an engineer between work and home.

<comment><USER35> I disagree that Microsoft got this right. I assume you're referring to giving everyone their own office. I worked for MS for 3 years on a team that did that. For sure, having your own office is really nice. But it really stifles communication and creativity.

Even worse, when space is low, the solution is to double people up in offices. That can create really uncomfortable situations that can harm productivity as well, much like suddenly getting a new, unexpected roommate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> the header picture in the article is terrible. of course that kind of "open office" is awful.

1) looking at your (single) monitor, you have 4 to 5 people inside your field of vision. talk about distraction city.

2) no desk space. bad for ergonomics, and no "thinking space" either.

3) no personal space. stretch our arms to your sides, and you'll whack your coworker's head.

talk about cramming them in like sardines. i run my office as an "open plan" but we have a good 1.5 meters separating people, and people are either facing wall, or window. (not facing each-other)

</comment><comment><USER64> After working in a cube partitioned off from everyone else on the team for 7 years, I will disagree with the title of this post. I long for a more interactive workspace. I find myself depressed, not motivated and alone. My instincts tell me it would be nice to have a little more human contact. At present I can go days without speaking to others on the team. And without much of a social circle, I think the scenario is quite a big contributor to my depression and lack of motivation.

</comment><comment><USER65> I've always felt that space preference varies by person and task. Given that nearly all knowledge can or do use laptops, it seems curious everyone has an assigned daily seat.

<comment><USER66> Speaking only for myself, I can't work on a laptop for long periods of time. The downward tilt of my head to see the screen, the tight keyboards & mice, and small screens make it very uncomfortable for more than a few hours.

For this reason, I have a dedicated screen, full sized keyboard and separate mouse. All configured and arranged to be most comfortable to me, so not exactly interchangeable.

Thus, a dedicated "assigned" seat. I wouldn't want it any other way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if shared office spaces with hundreds of teams in them, a very popular startup location these days, is perhaps the worst of the breed. Half a dozen teams talking to each other, multiple people on the phone, people having lunch behind you, dogs running around the office, phones ringing, skype sessions, car alarm outside the window etc etc.

On the plus side at some point it gets dense and chaotic enough to become pure white noise.

</comment><comment><USER67> I hate open plan. Hell I hate open door policies. My door is closed till noon and closed again at 5:30 sharp. If you need to collaborate pick up the phone!

</comment><comment><USER68> It's not a dichotomy between open-plan and individual cubicles

I've never worked in a cubicle office but it doesn't appeal, however I hate open plan offices too... for the reasons in the article - too much extraneous noise

Favourite office was more like a house, about half a dozen people to each room. The rooms were open to each other, doorways but no doors, no barriers to wandering through to the next room for a chat.

</comment><comment><USER69> What a finding! People knows for ages that open space is beneficial for a manual, drone work, while for tasks in which so-called intellect must be involved, quietness or even solitude is absolutely necessary. This is why a workshop or a Mc. Donald's kitchen is a tightly packed open space, while academics work productively in an isolated pairs or alone.

</comment><comment><USER70> Here in Italy, open plan offices seem to be the default because you can cram more people in them, and real estate/space are at a premium here, so it's difficult to do otherwise.

I'd be curious how things are in other places where costs per square meter are high and there is not a huge tech culture. In other words, San Francisco is probably an outlier.

</comment><comment><USER71> Nobody discussed on call?

Would I get away with "Sorry boss I can't fix the emergency this afternoon, home is too quiet and comfortable and spacious, but thank god my kids are coming home from school and once they start screaming at each other, playing video games, and watching TV, I'm sure I'll be able to get right to work on the problem."

</comment><comment><USER72> I work for a large company with an open office plan. We have many different types of employees, from software developers to sales folks to editors and writers. While there is the occasional complaint about a loud coworker or something, I generally very much enjoy the atmosphere, and I hear similar comments from my colleagues.

One of the things that makes our implementation very effective is that everyone from the CEO to the interns sit at the same desks and share the same environment. The culture is very open and everyone is encouraged to walk up to anyone and ask them a question or ten, of they have them. This collaborative environment more than makes up for the occasional loss in individual employee productivity, in my opinion.

It probably also helps that we are an instant message culture as opposed to a phone conversation one, which cuts down on a lot of the noise distraction as well.

</comment><comment><USER73> I think the positive and negative effects of open floor plans vary per person and the type of work being done. For example, I can find music disturbing when I need to do work that requires a lot of thought and concentration but it's perfectly fine if I'm doing something mundane.

The comfort of having a door to close is also nice so you can focus. Also it's great to be able to every once in a while take a few minute break and do something mindless and non-work related and not have people think you're slacking.

Like some others that posted here I think you need to mix and match for a semi-open floor plan that includes, conference rooms, lounges and private offices that people can take turns in.

However, when I worked at companies with open floor plans I tended to hang out with my coworkers more outside the office. It was good for team building and for pulling some funny pranks on one another.

</comment><comment><USER74> Someone upvote this past middle management!

</comment><comment><USER75> At work I am crammed into a corner with about 16 sq feet to live in including my chair and table. At least I have a window but otherwise I am a sardine with a view. Our parent company (which occupies the other 8 floors) hate us so we are forced to live on one floor. I bet the density exceeds the fire code.

</comment><comment><USER76> I'd imagine the effect of open-plan offices on productivity greatly depends on the nature of the company and how the company operates. If a company mainly produces software in a non-mission critical domain where, say, a 5x gain in productivity is more valuable than a 1.5x gain in reliability, they're likely to have very short release cycles à la agile development. That kind of operation relies heavily on communication and collaboration within and across teams, so an open-plan office is likely going to be much more productive. If you don't have a collaboration-based development strategy, I'd buy that open- plan offices might often make employees less productive, but even then there will be multiple factors at play.

</comment><comment><USER54> What's with qz.com? They seem to have come out of nowhere to be a pretty awesome source of news, maybe better than TheVerge (who also seemed to come out of nowhere last year).

Of the most interesting ~20 stories I've seen in the past week, 5 were qz.

</comment><comment><USER77> At Spotify, we have a lot of team-rooms which seat 8-10 people. They all have a lounge area with whiteboard walls as well as a small conference room for design discussions, 1-1:s etc.

</comment><comment><USER78> Another very frustrating thing about open-office plans is that it makes me seem like an asshole. There are many days where I'll be annoyed or frustrated debugging something, and generally being a buzzkill while everyone else shoots the shit. I have no problem with everyone else shooting the shit, but I can sense people are afraid of the look I have on my face. Some days I just need to be away from people.

</comment><comment><USER79> Does somebody has experience and tips how to effectively organize workspace in a growing early stage startup. When your headcount is growing steadily, flexibility of an open office space is a big plus, but are there good solutions that combine open layouts with private workspace? Headphones, moveable desks, working from home. Anything else? Share your experiences.

</comment><comment><USER80> The employers with open-plan offices care more about their profits than their employees. It's as simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER81> Oh god! its obvious. Not sure why companies creating a noisy, chaotic workplace instead of a calm serene one. One reason may be to cram more people into a small space.

</comment><comment><USER82> I don't know if anyone at Qz.com is reading this, but if you open the link in internet explorer it redirects you to an article about programmers and autism.

</comment><comment><USER83> Once I was renting an office of my own. Recently, I have moved to work from local library. I consider it 100% improvement in working conditions.

</comment><comment><USER84> I'd like to provide a different perspective. This is anecdotal, but I have "before and after" experiences that directly relate to the topic.

I work as a Presales Engineer for a software company. At the beginning of this year, we switched from a 90s-style cubicle setup with dividers to an open- office setup. When the change was announced last Fall, everyone on my team voiced heavy skepticism. We thought that it would greatly reduce our productivity as well as the already-limited privacy we had in an office setting. We had systems in place to limit the interruptions coming from the sales and marketing teams, and an open-office plan would practically nullify them. But we were the minority, so our concerns were swept under the rug. Fortunately, things ended up well.

For the sales and marketing folks, things have improved greatly since we made the switch six months ago. They now sit with us in the same "pods," which are collections of IKEA desks. Each pod has several sales and marketing people and one or two Presales Engineers. They can ask us any question at any time. And unlike with email, which we could previously put on a queue to answer later, or instant message, which we could ignore or temporarily block (DND mode), we now have to provide the answer right away. They can in turn relay that answer to the sales channel or the customer with a much shorter turnaround, which helps to advance and close sales faster.

As for us Presales Engineers, I cannot tell if the net result has been a positive or a negative. On the one hand, we now have a lot more distractions. We see people walking around and we hear their conversations. I personally have memorized the phone scripts that my pod-mates use when they call customers. Another negative has been team cohesion. In the previous setup, my team used to sit together on one side of the floor and we could have conversations much more easily. Now we're spread out all over the place, and most of our interaction occurs via group chat (Google Hangout).

Collectively, everyone's morale has improved quite a bit. It's very refreshing to be able to walk out of the elevator into an open space, as opposed to a claustrophobic, never-ending group of cubicles. And all the pods are right in front of the windows, which means everyone can now enjoy the Southern California sun and the great view of mountains we have from our office. I purchased a nice set of noise-canceling headphones (company paid for it) that I put on whenever I need to get in "the zone" to work on things that need deep concentration, and I trained my pod-mates to not interrupt me when I have them on. It works really well. Other pods have also come up with systems that work for them.

Another collective benefit has been social cohesion. When the teams were separate last year, there was an "us vs. them" mentality. The sales folks saw us engineers as unapproachable, and we saw the sales folks as needy and disruptive. Now though, each pod has become a team, and people are much more willing to help each other and collaborate. This has eliminated a lot of the tension in the office.

It is worth noting that the above occurred within the context of a sales team and the engineers that support that team. That said, I'm pretty sure it can also apply to developers. We actually had one of the developer teams move to our floor a couple of months ago (the A/C unit on their floor broke). At first they had the same fears as my team of engineers had. But it ended up working out really well. Sales people never interrupt them, and communication flows from sales to Presales (my team), and from there to this group of developers. Being able to walk over to their desks to show the problem we're having and walking through it in person, as opposed to trying to do it over email or IM, has been a great boon for both parties.

Bottom line: open-offices have their pros and cons. The vast majority of Hacker News users are technical people and it seems most of them are adamantly against open-office plans. But as someone who has a bigger picture view (since I work with everyone in the company), I can tell you that there is a chance the net result can be a positive if the plan is implemented well.

</comment><comment><USER85> I'm tired of these kind of generalizations. Our open plan office is geared towards developers and quiet and peaceful 95% of the time. Standing rule is, you wanna talk, you take it outside into the kitchen or the meeting room. Simple.

Also, people can work from home whenever they want. Most prefer to be in the office _because it's nice and quiet_.

The problem isn't open spaces, the problem is the people in it.

<comment><USER86> I don't see how it can be quiet and peaceful if people are typing in close quarters. That stuff's loud.

Not to mention that there's a psychological pressure just from being around people who are in the same room all the time - difficult to give yourself permission to relax and focus in on one thing when someone might come and interrupt you at any point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Quartz not working in my Steam browser makes me less happy. What kind of high tech is qz.com using?

</comment><comment><USER88> My last job had a pretty open office. It was great actually, really social.

</comment><comment><USER89> definitely ture, an environment which provide more freedom & privacy, will get more feedback, and make the worker happier.

</comment><comment><USER90> Personally I will never work in an open plan office again if I can avoid it .. when I was interviewing for a new position a year or so ago I had to turndown two offers from interesting companies due to their seating arrangements.

I do not want to spend the majority of my working day five feet from someone else with no barrier having to deal with the distraction, noise, invasion of personal space that comes with that

to me it shows a lack of respect towards your employees

</comment><comment><USER91> I can definitely see how this could make people more sick, though I work in an open office and I rarely get sick, could be genetics or it could be that I eat food grown locally, work out and run every day and generally have alot of fun outside of work.

The human body NEEDS to get sick to build anti-bodies - without these then you will get sick more often. The American way of "Take antibiotics or medicine as soon as you get sick!" is one of the worst habits of my beloved American people (and fast food).

<comment><USER92> Curious, do you get much sun? Vitamin D definciency commonly results in sickly people too.

<comment><USER93> You don't need much. National Institutes of Health recommends 5-30 minutes of daytime exposure, twice a week. [1]

[http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD- HealthProfessional...](http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD- HealthProfessional/)

<comment><USER91> Sorry but I don't trust anything with .gov to tell me what my body can already tell me. We have to learn to listen to it.

<comment><USER94> > tell me what my body can already tell me

Your body doesn't always exhibit signs of something wrong, and there are many instances in which that's it's true and it's too late to take action. I had to get a birthmark removed from my back last summer because it could've been a malignant type of skin cancer. I certainly didn't "feel" anything from it, and wouldn't have known about it until a dermatologist pointed it out to me.

<comment><USER91> Should have gotten a double mastectomy, that would have made more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I don't know about open plans making people more susceptible to sickness, but on my exit interview on Friday, I mentioned that I thought the way we had done open office was counterproductive.

I like the idea of pods though, where QA, BAs and developers are all together, as opposed to 60 or so people all in this huge area, which is how we did it.

</comment><comment><USER96> Thank God. Can this fad die yet?

</comment><comment><USER97> Bl

</comment><comment><USER98> Cubicle offices make people less happy, open-plan offices make people less happy.. Maybe it's just working that makes people less happy.

<comment><USER86> A cubicle is not a real office.</comment></comment>


Harvard: 43% of white students legacy, athletes, related to donors/staff (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361 <comment><USER2> I never realized as I myself argued against minority affirmative action that white affirmative action was so massive. It seems it is actually the bigger issue by far.</comment>


Ask HN: Is my argument for the existence of free will correct? - <AUTHOR> The argument is that subjective experience would not have evolved without free will.
If there's no free will, then an animal with subjective experience would not have an evolutionary benefit over one without it.
P.S.  I'm assuming that subjective experience exists for at least one animal, which is true, since it exists for at least me from my perspective and for at least you from your perspective.
For a definition of "subjective experience" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia <comment><USER2> There is no free will. You can do what you will, but you cannot will what you will. It all comes automatically and you blindly follow it without any real control.

And if we think of the universe as a whole, your subjective perspective is like a worker thread in a computer program. You start with some specific parameters and evolve based on them. And at the same time there are multiple threads doing the same thing, but they have different parameters and a different evolution.

Your will boils down to simple programming. You make decisions based on your anatomy and life experience. Input parameters and program evolution (if/else mostly). When you're hungry your brain already decided if it needs glucose, protein or something else. Your will allows you only to satisfy the hunger or not. And that decision is made based on past experiences. What you ate and liked, what you didn't like, the fact that you decided at some point to lose weight, or to gain weight. A simple decision to eat a hamburger is powered by your entire life so far.

But if you really want something interesting to think about and you're a true hacker, look at the universe as a whole. At any point inside it matter either exists or it doesn't. Do you know any other binary-based ecosystem which contains different arrangements of data that evolve in time and space?

</comment><comment><USER3> > The argument is that subjective experience would not have evolved without > free will.

That's not an argument, it's an assertion. By its nature, subjective experience can't be used as an argument, because it's not accessible to the other parties to the debate. This is how subjective experience is defined.

> If there's no free will, then an animal with subjective experience would not > have an evolutionary benefit over one without it.

This is easily refuted by examples in which computer programs, neither conscious nor possessing free will, without any behavioral latitude whatever, in a rigidly defined computer environment with no random or unpredictable elements at all, evolve according to the usual rules of natural selection. Therefore evolution and the existence of natural selection cannot be used to argue in favor of free will.

> Is my argument for the existence of free will correct?

It's not only not correct, it's not, strictly speaking, an argument. This is not to say there is no such thing as free will. We just don't know.

The evidence for an argument in a debate must be accessible to all participants in the same way. This is not to say they will agree with the premise, but they will all experience the evidence in the same way before drawing their own conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think practically you are a nonintegrable and thus unpredictable process so your actions are not determined by your inputs thus you have free will.

<comment><USER3> That's an example of an argument that assumes what it should be proving, the original meaning of the expression "begging the question."

The question at the center of free will is whether there are any deliberate, choice-driven elements in human behavior that also _and coincidentally_ defy advance prediction. Your argument is that the presence of unpredictable elements proves the existence of unpredictable elements. It's also a tautology.

And finally, unpredictability doesn't prove free will, it only proves the existence of unpredictability. Free will would be a deliberate steering of the process toward some goal, something that true randomness contradicts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Please demonstrate the existence of subjective experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are having one right now.

See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia)</comment></comment>


A Comprehensive Guide to CSS Resets - <AUTHOR> http://sixrevisions.com/css/a-comprehensive-guide-to-css-resets/ <comment><USER2> The HTML5 reset is the most newsworthy one here. We are all entrenched with our own HTML4 resets at this point, but I'm all ears for the HTML5 reset.</comment>


Spotify: A guide to poor API management - <AUTHOR> https://jodal.no/2016/02/18/guide-to-poohttps://jodal.no/2016/02/18/guide-to-poor-api-management/r-api-management/ <comment><USER2> Working at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11122690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11122690)

</comment><comment><USER3> 404</comment>


Visualizing Electricity - <AUTHOR> https://demystifyingscience.com/blog/how-to-visualize-electricity <comment><USER2> I'm not sure how this visualization is better than the hydrodynamic visualization, but it's worse in one very important way - it uses "rotation" as a metaphor when angular momentum and spin are already very important. It would be hopelessly confusing to learn this metaphor (which has nothing to do with spin) and then try to disentangle it from your mental model when learning about spin later on.

<comment><USER3> More importantly, I don't understand what this model is trying to conceptualize.

The hydrostatic analogy helps a person understand the difference between voltage and current. But its real power is it gives you the building blocks that lets you understand more complicated behaviors by analogy.

Take power in the P=I*V sense. Pretending it's water, we can see how a supersoaker nozzle (ie high voltage, low current) is kinda moving the same amount of water in a unit of time as say a soda bottle tipped on its side (ie low voltage, high current). With the hydrostatic analogy, I can see how high voltage and high current are two different "things", AND I can extend those analogies to see how they explain additional concepts like power. That's a great mental framework! Now that I understand the basic dynamics and feel comfortable moving into the land of mathematical expressions, we can take off the training wheels and start talking about the really abstract stuff like capacitance.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what is the explanatory power of this "meshing gears" analogy. If you were to use this to explain electricity in say a high school physics class, what concept or insight does it help me grasp?

<comment><AUTHOR> "what does this help me grasp"

That electricity can be explained with atoms! And not the kind of bohr-model atoms that are thoroughly debunked (electron bead flying around nucleus magically). If we treat them like gearing shells, as chemists have for decades, we can provide a model of electricity that is consistent with quantum mathematical descriptions of the atom's shape and motion.

<comment><USER3> If you're the author, you should make clear who your audience is. "Demystifying Science" and "How to Visualize Electricity" imply a general high school audience... this sounds like it's specifically "How to Visualize Electricity for Quantum Physicists." Perhaps start off by stating some quantum formulas or misconceptions that aren't well served by the hydrostatic analogy but your analogy helps explain better. If I don't understand that framing, I'll know right away "ok, this is for a grad-level understanding, not high school."

Not saying this is bad work, it's just very niche work where people outside the niche won't really understand the point or appreciate it. Know your audience, and present appropriately. It fell flat to me because I was expecting it to be something that apparently it is not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There is no reason why high-school or younger children can't understand the basic modern conception of the atom. We hope to bring that down to everyone's level.

Physics should start with objects. So we start electricity with atoms, unlike the traditional analogies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tom-thistime " we propose the following animation: Electricity as surface-to-surface rotational gearing between electron-shells on atoms (see movie below). "

That's not the mechanism for ordinary electrical conduction in metals. In my opinion the resulting visualization is very misleading.

EDIT: I recommend the excellent Hyperphysics web site. [http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/ohmmic.h](http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/ohmmic.h)

<comment><AUTHOR> Why? Metals are addressed at the end of the video. Metals can be thought of in the same manner except with complex orbitals that host multi-polar contacts with neighboring atoms.

<comment><USER4> I think the poster is referring to the "electron gas as charge carrier" but personally I'm not exactly sure how things fit together.

<comment><AUTHOR> Charge is symbolized by directional momentum of rotation here. Transmission of momentum indicates arc'ing of current.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your analogy doesn't work for me.

Imagine the following simple case : A AC generator connected to two capacitors in series. Signal --||----||-- Ground . The voltage potential at the middle : In your analogy there is no reason for anything to turn as the electron wave are discontinuous inside the capacitors (there is a huge gap in the order of micrometers between each plate of the capacitor).

The main important thing of electricity is the Electric field not the electron field. The electric charges get pushed around by the electric field. Each of these electric charge carry with it its Coulomb electric field. Sum contributions of every charge and you have the local electric field.

In fact even more fundamental is the electric potential which you can take the slope to obtain the electric field.

<comment><AUTHOR> We can do A/c with the shells rotating back and forth. The micrometer gap is not a problem for the surface of the atom, which can extend indefinitely.

The electron is simply an excitation of the electric field in QM, so one does not come without the other.

Physics is the study of objects that exist, and so it's important to begin with objects in a visualization. Fields are a concepts that measure the location of something happening. That something is the surface of the atom.

<comment><USER5> >electron is simply an excitation of the electric field in QM

I am not a physicist but I think here is your mistake. The electron is an excitation of the Electron Field. It's matter aka fermions. The electric field are bosons. Those are two orthogonal things. You can have one without the other (although the fields are coupled).

<comment><AUTHOR> It is well understood that the bosons are excitations of fields.

A boson is not a 'thing' it is a happening. The atom is the first object in physics. That is a shapely thing with location.

<comment><USER5> The point I'm trying to make, is that there are light fields, and matter fields.

Those are two distinct independent things (that can eventually be coupled).

Electricity is mostly a light phenomenon.

With the fields everything happen locally.

If I recall correctly, one of Faraday main discovery was displaying the lines of the magnetic field using metallic powder. Showing that fields were "real" things.

Two electrons don't interact directly with one another. It's more electron interact with photon which then interact with another electron. The one case where two electron interact directly with one another is the Pauli exclusion principle to make sure electron don't find themselves at the same place.

When in doubt follow the energy.

You can store the energy as bumps in light field aka photons (E^2+B^2 (eps0=mu0=c^2=1) ).

You can also store the energy as bumps in the Fermionic field : sums of kinetic energy of electrons.

Finally you can store energy in the coupling between those two fields. But this happen only locally.

At first approximation when dealing with electricity problems what matters is the energy of the electric field, not the kinetic energy of the moving electrons.

<comment><AUTHOR> Faraday believed his 'fields' were what some sort of actual objects were doing. He called them tentacles IIRC.

In our initial atom at beginning of the vid, the electron has tentacles based on Faraday to account for the tails of the RDF of QM — the indefinite extension of the shell. These will be important in visualizing the atomics of light and gravity in future vids. We ignore them for the circuit because they would obscure the events, but the tentacles remain!

<comment><USER5> At the extreme electricity works just fine without the electrons. Take two hydrogen nucleus without any electrons (aka proton H+). Throw them around and see where they interact and land.

They experience electrostatic repulsion, no electron cloud required.

Local classical Maxwell is enough to explain electricity no need for QM.

I think I get what you are trying to do : "making the Light field implicit". It's a tempting thing to do because when things are coupled we are kind of thinking : is it the electric field which deformed the electron cloud or is it the electron cloud which generated the field.

But this picture is dangerously misleading. It makes you assume strange electron cloud which interact non locally in complicated way (strange arms...). By giving special properties to the electron it doesn't respect the symmetry with respect to charge. Maxwell works just fine for protons. It also completely obscure the facts that we can have external E and B field ; in particular it makes you think that photons need matter to exist which isn't the case.

It is much more clear and general to make light fields and matter fields explicit.

<comment><AUTHOR> photons are transactions between atoms.

<comment><USER5> Your formulation is misleading.

"Light is the way to exchange momentum between charge carriers".

First atoms are neutral, while light affect can only charge particles.

The atom is a composite of a positively charged point-like nucleous, and a negatively charged cloud-like charge density. This complex dance duo, can store energy in between them. Those are the bound states of the electron, but that's not the matter of electricity but chemistry. In electricity, this dance duo can store energy in its surrounding by deforming its electron cloud to become an electrostatic dipole.

Transaction is the wrong picture to have when we are dealing with electricity. The continuous picture is a lot better.

The momentum of an atom is a continuous quantity. At every moment in time it can be exchanged locally in continuous amounts. Both the positive nucleous and electron cloud are taking from the field and giving locally to the field.

Photon is kind of a confusing term because you have to distinguish between the virtual photon which mediates the coulomb interaction in a continuous way, and the real one which can go on its way, or be absorbed/emitted by atoms provided that the electron cloud can deform in such a way to account for energy conservation during the collision.

To see the distinction take the previous example of two protons H+ going towards each other then away. The trajectory to have in mind is they are following a perfect curves trajectories, and not a sequence of straight lines occasionally changing direction when the photon transaction happen. Those typical QM like trajectory you see in cloud chambers need the energy to become bounded in some discrete way. For example electron fly straight, real photon hit and is absorbed and atom change direction to conserve momentum and the electron jump to a higher orbital to conserve the energy (the energy is bounded to the atom for some time), the electron keep flying straight, then it emits a new photon and change direction. These kind of trajectories happen when the energy can only bounded in discrete quantities, but that's a matter about QM, and not electricity.

Finally clarifying what that the light field is carrying in : momentum, and making clear that the light field doesn't carry electric charge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honest feedback, this didn't really explain electricity for me. What is does is introduce an entirely new analogy for understanding electricity. Unfortunately, most elements of the new analogy are not relatable at all, meaning the analogy has no value. What do I care that the electrons "rotation" means charge and the speed means voltage? Why are they shaped like breathmints, how does that help if they are supposed to be gears?

At least the water and beads analogies help, because they are something I have a previous understanding of.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the music and the typeface. Made me hang onto watching the video much longer than I would have otherwise. The VO is also good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the main advantage over those models is that it uses atoms that are essentially shaped and moving as atoms do.

Perhaps the gearbox of your car is a relatable phenomenon for you. The breath mints are shaped like gears lol.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps a better analogy is Newton's cradle: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cradle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cradle)

The ticking beads don't really move but transfer energy to each other. That's maybe a more useful analogy than the notion of beads or water moving through some pipe.

I'm not a physicist of course but I get that what was explained to me in high school (many decades ago) was probably a bit of an oversimplification. Ticking beads lose some energy as they smash into each other. Hence thin wires heat up and glow.

This is probably cringe-worthy enough for anyone who actually studies this for a living; so I'll stop right there ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Same idea but momentum is angular in our model. Like the gearbox of a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I understand electricity reasonably well, but that video has left me very confused. Multiple watchings didn't help.

The first issue is I don't know what is real and what is metaphorical. The hydrogen orbitals are real? Are they squashed like that?. But the rotations are entirely fictional? Or do they correspond to electron spin? Do hydrogen atoms really share electron clouds or is that a metaphor?

Several specific issues: Ionized hydrogen doesn't have an electron, so what is the electron cloud. The ends of the wire rotating clockwise vs counterclockwise: the wires are pointing opposite directions, so the opposite directions cancel out, and they are rotating the same direction? Making a wire of single-file hydrogen: is that even theoretically possible? How is there drift velocity when the atoms are just rotating in place?

I understand that voltage is represented by the rotation speed in this model. (Is this different from momentum?) But what is current in this model? Everything was spinning when the circuit was open, and everything is still spinning when the circuit is closed.

What "level" of electricity is this model supposed to explain? It's discussing circuits, but I don't see how this model helps one understand why you need a resistor when connecting a LED to a battery, for instance. The resistor reduces current, which is not spin but propagation of an impulse? Or is the model supposed to help understand electric fields and stuff? (How would this model even explain an electric field in a vacuum, where there's nothing to spin?) Or is it intended to provide insight into what's happening at the quantum level?

I don't want to be critical, so hopefully these comments are constructive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. Yes, this model hopefully incorporates more of 'what is real' than the alternatives.

The hydrogen orbital, for example, is approximately spherical/toroidal, which matches the radial distribution plot of QM.

Ionized hydrogen has a delocalized electron; it is not gone — but rather elsewhere. In our model it is enmeshed with the others in the column.

Speed is used as a surrogate for momentum because QM doesn't allow us to deconstruct the speed/direction from the momentum separately. Ideally we could illustrate a more cohesive motion as well as faster for greater momentum.

Current is transfer of motion from the high-momentum, high-V, shells to weaker ones.

I have briefly discussed resistors and other elements of circuit in other threads here. Check it out and let's talk there.

Concerning your comment about vacuums, we have to understand that there truly is no vacuum. We assume that when atoms are isolated, their surface pressure is decreased such that they can occupy tremendous volumes. Currents in outer space are present with 8.49×10^-23 atoms per 10 cubic centimeters.

Hopefully we can move toward capturing QM, and ED descriptions of electricity. A magnetism video will follow soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In case the author of the video reads this: I tried to watch it but after 2 minutes I just had to turn it off as I couldn't handle that music anymore. It's _extremely_ distracting when you try to listen to what the narrator is explaining. It's not that I don't like background music in explanatory videos, but this music is way too loud and complex to not distract.

Also, considering the video is uploaded to YouTube, I would remove the moving white "stars" in the background. The model itself is very detailed already, which makes it noisy after running it though YouTube's compression, but the moving stars cause there to be even less bandwidth available for the visualization itself, resulting in more compression artifacts.

<comment><USER10> > It's not that I don't like background music in explanatory videos

And I'm totally against it. It is always distracting to me. If I'd want to have background music I could play it myself, and it would match my choice. The only videos that should have background music is where the music is in any way an important element of the story, e.g. if the topic is the work of an artist or composer. Otherwise, it _is_ distracting.

<comment><USER11> A catchy intro is nice tho.

<comment><USER10> Intro != background

<comment><USER11> true

(two can play at this game)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apropos visualizing atoms and their electrons, here's a fun sidebar. This IBM video[1] was made with an STM scanning tunneling microscope, which sees outer electrons. So while it shows the IIRC carbon monoxide molecules, standing up like buoys, as little balls, the background copper surface of delocalized electrons looks smooth, with ripples. You can't see the individual copper atoms. But if you instead used an AFM atomic force microscope, which can feel inner electrons, then you could - here's one of silicon[2].

When crafting and teaching abstract representations, it's easy to forget that these are real physical objects.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSCX78-8-q0) [2] [https://imgur.com/a/7Onbz8s](https://imgur.com/a/7Onbz8s)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's clear that a lot of work went in to this video and it's hard to hear criticism, especially of a labor of love. At the same time, I'd really like to see better analogies used for electricity, and that's going to require some very high quality work to replace the ones currently used.

The background music was quite bad and distracted a lot from the dialogue. (While I personally usually like the sound of bagpipes, _most_ people seem to hate them, so that's an especially bad sound to use.) The background music is tonally too close to the speaker's voice, so the two together sound like the speaker is having to compete with the background music.

The constantly-shifting background and the nonstop fluctations of the hydrogen atom both also distracted from the core concept. Especially because the starry background kept changing direction!

The video uses vocabulary that isn't going to make intuitive sense to novices. Examples: "radial distribution function", "quantum jumping", "drift velocity", "multipolar contacts".

The clockwise-vs-counter-clockwise rotation thing never occupies the same frame in the video, so the watcher is expected to keep track of this mentally. Some people really struggle with that.

The advantage of other models of electricity is that they relate it to things that many people have experienced. This model is much more abstract. Abstract can be okay, but you should show reasons why the abstract model is better than the more relatable models. What's wrong with the other models? You say, "For example, it has some serious advantages over the traditional visualizations like the 'electron bead flow' and 'water-pressure analogy'", and you kind of describe one flaw of each of the two other models, but you don't describe why, in practical terms, this is problematic for understanding electricity. Like, okay, the Bohr model doesn't match the reality of probability clouds and quantum effects, but how does this impact simple circuits?

I found that the first half of Feynman's _QED_ did a pretty good job of trying to explain quantum behavior in more abstract terms than the traditional approaches to light-as-wave-and-quanta. I'd also recommend looking at videos from 3blue1brown on YouTube for some ideas on how to present abstract concepts to viewers without breaking the bank on production.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for commenting.

The primary problem with the other analogies is that they don't use real objects. Physics is the science that studies objects that exist, after all. That means we can't be crashing concepts into one another (like charge reification, for instance). It's important to begin physical explanations with objects instead of concepts, so we advance the atom.

While this depiction of the atom isn't the end-all-be-all atom, it's a step in the right direction, hopefully.

<comment><USER14> Analogies are needed to grasp concept and allow to do predictions. This visualization was meaningless for me. I can't predict what will happen if we make three point connection with different potential for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to use a gravitational field analogy when teaching Secondary school physics.

Electrons are equivalent to "balls" with mass. Potential difference equates to a gravitational field (which most people seem to intuitively understand from experience). Balls can roll down slopes of different gradients, and therefore at different speeds, which is analogous to current and resistance.

It worked for me.

</comment><comment> tom-thistime This might be a workable visualization.

As physics it's wrong. There is an existing QM explanation for current flow in solids, attributed to Bloch and dating back to the late 1920s. It doesn't work like this visualization. For example in this visualization the electrons aren't transported anywhere, they just sit in place and rotate. That's misleading. In fact charge flows.

I worry about using an incorrect physical picture to visualize physics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because charge is rotation in this visualization, we can also say that the charge is moving since the speed of rotation propagates after the circuit is closed. This is a patent reification, of course, but the idea is consistent with QM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aphysically-high-speed particle tracks are used to represent wind.[1] I wonder if one could play similar games of colorization and expressive particles with electric circuits? What might one do with AC?

[1] [https://www.windy.com/-Pressure- pressure](https://www.windy.com/-Pressure-pressure)

<comment><AUTHOR> For us, A/C is simply back and forth motion of the e-shells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My mental image (fwiw) is that the push of an electron is able to push electrons both in immediate proximity and to electrons at a distance. So, that allows the relatively slow speed of moving electrons to produce nearly light speed changes in momentum of faraway electrons.

<comment><AUTHOR> yep. I think i agree.

<comment><USER16> Nice. And this is in contrast to pushing water (sound wave), where the wave propagates only at the speed that molecules bump. Like, if I'm in a big line, and someone pushes at the back of the line, I only get pushed by the person immediately behind me. An electron is able to be pushed by electrons at the back of the back of the line. The electron immediately behind an electron will push hardest, proportional to inverse square law. But when there are twenty electronics behind, and the very last one pushes, it has a decreasing effect on all electrons in front, but at time 2, those movements allow propagate forward, etc etc.

Wish I could visualize that. Oh yeah. Ha!

I like you spindle representation of inverse square law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate to rain on your parade, because I'm deeply interested in alternatives for established models, and as a rule I strongly prefer intuitive visualisations over mathematical wankery, but this is just... nonsense.

It has nothing to do with electricity in any sense. There's no matching theory that this is visualising.

To begin with:

1) This doesn't explain why in general only metals conduct electricity. You used the example of Hydrogen, which is a _nonconductive_ gas. It _might_ become metallic under certain circumstances, but nobody has a firm grasp on exactly how that works! Using the conditions found only in the cores of giant planets for a "simplified" example is absurd.

2) This doesn't explain why capacitors build up charge (literal excess electrons on one plate, and missing electrons on the other plate.) That is, your theory inside the wires has to also mesh well (heh) with what happens _outside_ the wires, such as the buildup of static electricity.

3) It doesn't explain how electrons conduct electricity through the vacuum, where there are no atomic orbitals.

4) It doesn't explain how rarefied plasmas conduct electricity, where for the majority of the time atomic orbitals are not in contact.

5) It doesn't explain other types of current, such as charged fundamental particles in cyclotrons.

6) You haven't explained how batteries produce the rotations.

7) You haven't explained how dynamos produce the rotations.

8) You haven't explained how resistors, capacitors, and inductors work in this model.

9) You haven't explained how the rotations produce heat, light, or any other useful work done by with electric machines or with electronic devices.

10) You said that ionised hydrogen atoms are required for this to work! But they are just isolated protons. They have no electrons or electron shells!

11) This is actually a flaw of other models too, but I'll throw it on the pile: The infinite extent of the QM electron field is just a simplification of the QM mathematical model. Clearly, this is physical nonsense. A hydrogen atom can never have an electron orbiting it meters away, or light years away. That's just gibberish.

12) And the final nail in the coffin: You'll find that in general an extended 2D or 3D grid of gears will often get "locked up" and cannot transmit rotations. This is practically a meme at this point: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/2hwwy0/those_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/2hwwy0/those_gears_wont_turn_which_i_guess_makes_it_a/)

For comparison, the liquid flow model is actually relatively accurate in terms of representing what's really going on (electron fluid flowing freely), and is also intuitive.

1) Resistors are like an constriction of the pipe. Flow is allowed but impeded.

2) Capacitors are like a wide section of the pipe, but blocked by a rubber sheet. Bulk flow through a capacitor is not possible, but vibrations can be transmitted.

3) Inductors are like a heavy propeller in the flow. The propeller resists flow while it's being "spun up", but then it no longer resists the flow when its speed matches the flow. If the flow in the pipe is reduced the momentum of the propeller provides pressure to keep the liquid flowing longer than it would have otherwise.

4) Transistors are like a soft rubber section of an otherwise inflexible pipe surrounded by a container with an input. Pressure in the container squeezes the flexible section and prevents flow through the pipe.

Etc...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hydrogen is a great place to start with electricity since there is only one orbital surface/ electron-shell. The principles are easily generalized to the multipolar surfaces of metals. Metals are conductive because of these unique d orbitals. In general they have unpaired electrons, which means charge on balance.

"To begin with"...

1) these are ionized hydrogens with delocalized electrons. 2) Capacitors build up voltage, which is differential rotation of their metal's e-shells. 3) In the vacuum, there is such low pressure on the atoms that their surfaces expand to fill the void. There is no such thing as a true vacuum. This is also how cathode ray tubes work under this model. 4) See above. The orbitals are in contact. 5) All those cyclotron measurements are electric at the end of the day. 6) Batteries charge the terminals electro-chemically. chemistry will follow in an additional video after magnetism. Basically, it is the same concept. Enmeshment of surfaces. 7) What dynamos? 8) All materials resist current to certain extent; this has to do with how conductive they are, which is a direct result of how their orbitals are configured/ how the atom is shaped. Capacitors are just terminals separated by insulating resistors. All these details deserve a follow-up blog at some point for sure. Thanks. 9) light is coming. Heat is chaotic motion, while electricity is a particular rotatory type. heat also involves translation/vibration in addition to shell rotation. 10) Hydrogens that are ionized are not empty protons, they simply have delocalized shells. 11) We don't think the limitless extension of the electron is mathematical gibberish. We think that those structures are essential to other atomic phenomenon, including light and gravity. videos to follow. 12) the locked up gear thing isn't a problem for the multi-polar orbitals of actual metals. It would be a problem for a hydrogen lattice, unless it had a hexagonal crystal, with bent geometry...hm.

<comment><USER17> At the risk of feeding a troll:

> Hydrogen is a great place to start

It is an insulator, so a terrible place to start. Simplicity doesn't help if it's oversimplified to the point of being _totally wrong_.

> In the vacuum, there is such low pressure on the atoms that their surfaces > expand to fill the void.

I don't think you realise just how absurdly distorted the orbitals would have to be for this to make sense. The gap in a classic Leidenjar capacitor is about 1mm, or something like 4 million times the inter-atomic spacing. You seriously want me to believe that the surface atoms have electrons whizzing out to orbits shaped like a 4,000,000-to-1 ratio ellipse and then coming back to whip around a specific nucleus? You're... kidding, right?

> All those cyclotron measurements are electric at the end of the day

What I mean is that cyclotrons have individual, loose particles circling around. Like isolated electrons, muons, protons, or whatever. They're not atoms, but there's a definite current that you can measure in Amperes. The beam makes a magnetic field and everything. How does your "atomic orbitals meshing together" explain currents that don't involve atoms!?

> Batteries charge the terminals electro-chemically... Basically, it is the > same concept.

The same concept as what? You haven't explained how _chemicals_ can produce the electron shell _rotations_.

> What dynamos

It's another word for generators. How does an AC generator generate your current? Use equations please that predict the output current using numbers based on the geometry of the coils and the rotation.

> All materials resist current to certain extent

That's just plain false, superconductors exist.

> All these details deserve a follow-up blog at some point for sure.

They deserve treatment in the first post, the first paper, the first video. It's like saying "I've got this wonderful idea for fusion power! The actual fusion and power bit I might cover later, I'm going to start by waffling on about how the vacuum chamber has no air in it."

> Hydrogens that are ionized are not empty protons, they simply have > delocalized shells

In no way is this true. You can separate protons from electrons and move them meters apart and they'll just sit there. This happens all the time in interstellar space where plasmas can have mean inter-particle distances measured in meters. There is no meaningful way in which you can point at a particle in _one room_ and say that it "belongs" to a particle in _another room_ and that this makes up a hydrogen atom.

> We don't think the limitless extension of the electron is mathematical > gibberish

Mathematically it's perfectly fine. You can define fields however you like. Infinite extent, infinite precision, infinite whatever you like. The physical universe just doesn't work that way, there are no known physical infinites.

> We think that those structures are essential to other atomic phenomenon, > including light and gravity.

If you can solve the problem of gravity, you can collect your Nobel prize. Unfortunately you have to start with baby steps, such as explaining how capacitors work without hand-waving. Use numbers. Run a simulation or two.

> the locked up gear thing isn't a problem for the multi-polar orbitals of > actual metals. It would be a problem for a hydrogen lattice, unless it had a > hexagonal crystal, with bent geometry...hm.

Hmm indeed. Look at the crystal structures of common metals: [https://www.ggspdt.com/uploads/8/1/0/4/81043910/8970374_orig...](https://www.ggspdt.com/uploads/8/1/0/4/81043910/8970374_orig.png)

The close-packed hexagonal structure cannot transmit rotations in the sense of enmeshed gears, because it's made up of a bunch of triangles! Last time I checked, zinc, magnesium, and cadmium are all conductors.

Again, with actual metals, the "polar" orbits don't participate in conduction. Loose electrons do, and they don't mesh like gears. They can't possibly, because hexagonal lattices still conduct electricity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not gonna dignify your ad-homs..but aren't u the troll here? Last meal for you: the model is perfectly compatible with all of maxwell's equations and basic QED. This is an illustration not a new theory.

Yes, ionization is interpreted as thinned, extended outer surface of the atom (e-shell). No physical reason it cannot fill a room if depressurized sufficiently.

Otherwise, show me a single electron. And then use it explain the concept of charge, not quantitatively but mechanistically. What other than magic holds it in it's path?

Until then, ionization is delocalized surface of the atom because that's the only way to rationalize the idea with physical objects (aka the atom), which physics ought start with. It IS the study of objects that exist. If you consider ionization this way, it clears up the rest of your concerns & I will happily walk you through the details. If you're not willing to take that interpretation we have nothing more to discuss, eh?

<comment><USER17> > perfectly compatible with all of maxwell's equations and basic QED. This is > an illustration not a new theory.

You may have misunderstood a few aspects of QED. It is true that the U(1) field of QED and gauge theory says that there are "little circulations" that explain all known electromagnetic phenomena, but this is at a completely different scale than electron _orbits_ , and doesn't require atoms in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a post about visualization, there are surprisingly few graphics in the article. Perhaps they want us to read and visualize, but I was disappointed to be frank.

<comment><USER11> The video was decent, but lacks depth.

How do electrons with different occupied shells interact, how does this mesh with our existing model?

What analogy fits this model for resistance? Capacitance? Are these electrons spinning on an axis with friction, or something?

How does this model play with RF electrodynamics? Are there similar constructs for the orthogonal magnetic plane?

The list of questions surely goes on...

<comment><USER11> > Each pair of polar surfaces within an orbital is able to productively > contact neighboring atoms.

I have no idea what to visualize for "productively" contacting neighbors in this model.

<comment><AUTHOR> imagine your car's gear box when you put the thing into drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Really love this. How did you decide on the rotational transmission, rather than electron "flow"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Momentum transfer is the key idea. Flow is not apparent. Spherical field rotation is actually a decent way to conceive of electron motion: [https://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/phys3mm3/notes/whatisspin.pd...](https://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/phys3mm3/notes/whatisspin.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Wait, that paper discusses how the spin and magnetic moment of a single electron arise from energy in the electron's wave field. Where does the paper connect these ideas to the flow of electrical current? Does current really depend on a "spinning" electron interacting with the spin of a neighbouring electron? (I thought that'd only come up in explaining magnetism.) Is quantum mechanical spin necessary at all to understand classical current flow?

On first read, the mental model of atomic-scale gears meshing and turning at different rates (does direction matter? How do you think of amperage in terms of rotating shafts made of meshed gears?) more fraught with simplifying assumptions and unnecessary epicycle-style complications than the conventional hydrodynamic model.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is that transfer of momentum between atoms is a good approximation of current. In that sense, the difference in shell momentum, on average, can be thought of as potential or voltage.

Like the hydraulic analogy, this visualization is to help us understand not an exact movie of what's happening. Math may be better for that level of detail, for now. This visualization uses atoms, which is the main advantage over the hydraulic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Username checks out!

<comment><AUTHOR> luv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For an ee student this is trivial stuff.</comment>


Some thoughts on Steve Jobs and Agile - <AUTHOR> http://agilewarrior.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/some-thoughts-about-steve-jobs-and-agile/

<comment><USER2> Takeaway: You cant learn from Steve Jobs, because you arent Steve Jobs.

Sure applies to me. I have to do it a different way, even when people are inspired and loyal.</comment>