<< Can an electrical charge exist and not involve the presence or absence of an electron? I don't think so, at lease not outside of a nucleus and its strange zoo of subatomics.
<<
You mention protons as the other "fundamental charge carrier", but you don't quite seem to understand that they can also be mobile. Just think, a simple hydrogen cation is really just a proton and they do exist in nature (think pure acids).
These are quite basic concepts, really. And, yes, subatomics is very much like a zoo. There's even different classes much like animals are split into vertebrates, invertebrates, and so forth. I think there are even quarks with half charges, though I may have that confused with spins.
<< Any charge is some whole number multiple of the charge of one electron and the charge is there only because of the presence or absence of ELECTRONS there. Electric charge only comes in electron sized units, nothing smaller, nothing bigger. This applies also to all ions, protons and, err, it's a small list. The only basic things that have electric charge are electrons and protons outside of the zoo, that is. Ions are atoms with added or absent electrons. Electrical current involves the movement of mobil charges. So, you can count these electron sized units of charge carried past a given point, both positive and negative charges in positive and negative directions, take the algebraic sum and that is an electrical current. >>
Once again, I'm amazed at how you can explain the above so clearly and accurately (close enough), yet still define (see your above post) amperes electrons/second. You said it yourself, electrons are not the only charged particles (even if you ignore quarks).
It is true that for all intents and purposes (if I'm right about quarks with half-charges), the fundamental electric charge is 1.667 E-19 C (something like that, I usually use a book). Now, if we stick with your example and say ~6,242,200,000,000,000,000 pass through a point within 1 second we measure one ampere, then let me ask you what happens if we shove in an extra electron during that one second? Better yet, what if say ~6,242,200,000,000,000,000 + 1 electrons pass through in the space of two seconds? The current measured over those two seconds is 1 and 1/12,484,400,000,000,000,000 amperes. I don't think that extra fraction constitutes one whole electron.
<< By the way, a coulomb is the charge of a definite large number of electrons, the number I gave before - 1 amp second of current. So, amperes DOES measure electrons per second one way or the other. For example, a chromium ion in a plating bath can not travel up the wire to the ammeter. It meets an electron flowing in the opposite direction and forms a neutral chromium atom. So, you can bet you booty you are measuring electron flow. >>
Take one tank and fill with water. Seperate it into halves with, say, a plastic wall. Essentially, both halves are electrically and physically isolated from one another. Add sodium cations to one side and allow it to mix. Then, remove the barrier and measure the current flow. Now, unless the laws of physics have changed in the last second or so (i'm still on my computer, so they haven't) then you will get a measurement in amperes (coulombs per second) until the tank is a homogeneous mixture of water and sodium cations. All without the benefit of free flowing electrons.
If you want (and I think you will, since water has electrons and so will +1 sodium ions), repeat above with tanks of pure vacuum (realistically impossible, but since this is a thought experiment...) and add a bunch of protons instead of sodium ions. In essence, amperes doesn't only measure electron flow and doesn't imply electron flow. Electron flow implies and results in amperes. Simple, but fundamental difference.
<< Again, current is the amount of charge per unit time moving past a point. It has NOTHING to do with the velocity of the charge carrier. You may be confounding the words RATE ( few / many per unit time )and VELOCITY ( slow / fast )( distance per unit time ). >>
Let me break this down into terms you might understand. First off, velocity is a rate. It is the rate of change of distance over time (speed) and a unit vector. Secondly, amperes is equal to coulombs per second. That's the definition, can't really argue against it. We're also agreed on that. So, given amperes = coulombs/second, let's start the following.
If you insist on using electrons as your charge carrier, then amperes = coulombs/second = coulombs/electron * electron/second (this is where you stop and suddenly drop the coulombs/electron term) = coulombs/electron * electron/(insert arbitrary number of spatial dimensions) * (same arbitrary number of spatial dimensions)/second.
To sum it up, amperes = charge per electron times electron density times speed (make that velocity if you convert to vector space). Note I can easily replace electron with proton or ANY other charge carrier.
<< Measuring current is really just a counting process, like counting the number of cars that past a toll booth in an hour. >>
Each car is a charged carrier. Also, all types of measurement is really very much the same counting process. I can't think of any measurement that isn't quantized.
<< No radar gun needed. >>
Only if the speed of each car is the same.
Assume you have ten toll booth and 10 cars pass through each toll booth a second resulting in what we arbitrarily term ampere (terms are rather arbitrary, in case you haven't noticed).
If we reduce the number of toll booths to 1 then each car would have to pass the toll booth at 100 times the previous speed so that 100 cars can pass the toll booth in the space of one second.
If we go the other way and have 100 toll booths, then each car can take a whole second to pass a toll booth and still result in one ampere. You can have 50 of them pass through in 0.1 second, then nothing for 0.8 second, then the other 50 pass within 0.1 second and the overall measurement over that one second would be one ampere. Or, you can have 100 pass through over a period of 0.8 second, then 50 come back in the next 0.1 second, then another 50 go through in 0.1 second after that, and the measurement over that 1 second is still the same.
Now, you might start thinking "what if I decrease the length of time to, say, 0.5 seconds or something much smaller than that?" Well, you can keep decreasing the time required for measurement but ultimately you'll find a limit to how small you can go. The limit is either the size of the charge carrier can't get any smaller, or the way you measure the charge carrier can't measure anything smaller. Also, at a certain point, you end up butting heads with Heisenburg's Law and into the realm of quantum physics.
