<p>Are you supposed to grasp the wire with your thumb in the direction of CONVENTIONAL CURRENT or in the direction of ELECTRON FLOW?</p>
<p>thumb in direction of conventional current</p>
<p>Ok great. What about the second right hand rule? The one used to determine the motion of the wire/direction of the force. </p>
<p>There is a diagram in Barrons with a wire perpendicular to magnetic lines.
They say the current is going into the paper but then they go on to say grasp the wire with your thumb pointing out of the paper. </p>
<p>How does that make sense?</p>
<p>I can’t really understand what you’re trying to say. Are you talking about the force experienced by a current carrying wire? Because when you point your thumb in the direction of the conventional current, your middle finger/palm points in the direction of the force felt by the wire. So you’re talking about the same rule. </p>
<p>The second one tells you about the direction of the induced current (recall lenzs law). Where middle finger- direction of the induced current and thumb- direction of the moving object. </p>
<p>I did magnetic induction yesterday and the right hand rules confused me too. I read the chap from pr again today, tried to make some sense out of it. (as I’ve explained above, hopefully I’m right lol). But yeah there was a diagram which confused me like yours. But then I thought I’d ask a question on yahoo haha.</p>
<p>Barrons only really explains 1 right hand rule.</p>
<p>This really doesn’t have to be more complicated than it is. What IS the right hand rule? It’s a convention for the cross product of two vectors.
a </p>
<p>nicely explained</p>