Water Solves Mazes, Why Not Electrons?

A few weeks ago, we looked at a video showing water “solving” a maze. [AlphaPhoenix] saw the same video, and it made him think about electrons “finding the path of least resistance.” So can you solve a maze with foil, a laser cutter, a power supply, and some pepper? Apparently, as you can see in the video below.

At first, he duplicated the water maze, but without the effect of gravity. It was hard to see the water flow, so pepper flakes made the motion of the liquid quite obvious. The real fun, though, started when he cut the maze out of foil and started running electrons across it.

It isn’t easy to visualize electrons, but you can see the heat they produce using a thermal camera. Of course, a physics guru will tell you that you really aren’t watching electrons flow, but rather you are seeing charge moving via charge carriers. Regardless, the effect is that electricity flows, and you can see how that works with the thermal camera and develop intuition about it using the water model. A cool demo.

If you want to watch the video that inspired this one, we covered it. If you didn’t get a thermal camera for a gift last year, you can buy one for yourself, but be sure to check out the comments for some options the post didn’t cover.