I'm really puzzled with a problem for a rather long time and I can't really seem to be able to solve it at all. It has to do with the electrons that move in a circuit.
We know that a battery builds up an excessive amount of electrons on its' anode, and that by connecting a wire between the anode and the cathode, the electrons will travel from the anode to the cathode, and so there will be a current in our simple circuit. So, in this scenario, the battery provides our circuit the electrons, and they travel through the wire from the anode to the cathode.
Know, we are told that conductive materials are materials that have a specific chemical structure, that allows them to have free electrons, being able to wonder freely in the material. We are told that if we apply an electric field (voltage) on such materials, the random motion of the free electrons inside the conductor will acquire a resultant velocity, and that its' direction will depend on the electric field that we applied.
We are also told that batteries supply with constant voltage a circuit. So, from whom are the electrons that are moving in a circuit coming? The electrons that are moving through a conductive wire in a circuit are the ones being originated from the battery alone (and have nothing to do with the wire's free electrons), or are they the wire's electrons, that move in a loop through the battery (with the battery supplying only the voltage needed and nothing else)? Or both?
In every answer I need a detailed physical explaination on what is actually going on. One thought that I had was that the battery is supplying its' electrons in the circuit, and when these electrons enter into the wire they bump into the free electrons of the conductive material, and they just exchange positions (the electrons of the battery) with the electrons of the material, but in this process we have electrons from the wire moving (something like the motion of charge inside a diode's junction). So the electrons from the battery actually collide with the electrons of the wire, then the moving electrons of the wire collide into other free electrons of the wire, and the current that is being created in the circuit is being created from both the electrons originating from the battery and the free electrons of the wire.
Thanks in advance.