March 20, 2014 • 43 mins
It is literally all around you (and even inside you) - electricity makes up the basis of modern life. But what exactly is electricity and how does it work? Josh and Chuck chase away the darkness and explain electricity in their usual electrifying way.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there.
Chuck's wearing his Last Chance garage hat, which means that
all is right with the world. You know, Chuck's not
(00:22):
wearing that hat. Who knows what's going on? There's I
thought a loss this thing. Yeah, yeah, I think I
vaguely remember that that freak was the Delta and everything,
and I was like, oh, here it is. It's on
my head in your back pocket with Bruce Springsteen. That's right. Uh,
(00:42):
how you doing great? Um? Chuck, Yes, I think you
knew this, but I'm not sure everybody listening does. Um.
If you if you like not you, Chuck put people
out there. I'm speaking to you now. If you like
hanging out with us on the podcast, you can hang
out with this outside of the podcast too. You know.
Some people are like, can you release a podcast every day?
No we can't, but we do hang out on Twitter,
(01:03):
Facebook that kind of thing every day. Yes, we do
every day. Our Twitter handle is s y SK podcast
Facebook dot com, Slash Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, we're
trying to get up over a hundred thousand likes on Facebook,
so close. So if you could like us and then
just hide us if you don't like us, I don't
even think you need to hide us, like I think
(01:24):
eight percent of people get any given posts. It varies
something like that though, right, So, I mean I think
you will seek us out though, rather than hiding us
because it's in an entertaining page. We like to deliver
the goods. Yeah, and then of course you can hang
out with us on our website stuff you should know
dot com where we have blogs, slide shows, we post
our podcasts there, videos, it's like the the Josh and
(01:48):
Chuck video network. Agreed. Okay, so they're all right. Now
let's talk about electricity. Electricity, electricity. I've had the talking
Head song in my head, which one electricity where all
these sees or little dots. I thought you're gonna say
once in a lifetime. No, that's what is that called?
(02:10):
Once in a lifetime? Yeah? Uh yeah, I've been singing
the Schoolhouse Rock electricity song over and over in my head.
What about the electric company theme song? M I haven't
been singing that, but do you remember it? Yeah? That
was that was Electric Company over Sesame Street. Even Oh, yeah,
I didn't think there had to be like a you know,
(02:31):
I didn't know it was like the Stones or the Beatles.
You know. No, it's uh in the correct answer, there's
the Who. By the way, what do you mean is
that right now? I mean, yeah, I love the Who,
but I'm with you. I don't see the need to
rank things like that. Well, Plus, the Electric Company came
(02:52):
on after Sesame Street. I think, yeah, excwed slightly older.
I think Sesame Street to me felt like, you know,
seven eight year olds. Electric companies were like eight, nine, ten, twelve.
And then even younger than Sesame Street was pin Wheel
if I remember correctly, that was after your time. Pinwell
was pretty cute. It was like little kids, and the
Sesame Street was like little kids, and then Electric Company
(03:14):
was like cool and Romper Room was kind of pre
Sesame Street. Even so, Was that the one with Reggedy,
Ann and Andy? I don't remember. I just remember it was.
It's very immature, Yeah, three childish you think Reggedy, Ann
and Andy were in that? Well, at any rate, we've
angered enough people now, I know. Uh, I have an
intro for this one. Okay, you ready, about thirteen point
(03:38):
eight billion years ago, a little something called the Big
Bang happened and the universe was created, so says you.
So this there's a lot of people. You know, we
weren't around. Nobody saw it, but it's been detected and
it's strongly suspected by scientists that the universe is thirteen
point eight billion years old and that it came from
(04:01):
something called the Big Bang, which, by the way, I
would love to do an episode on Okay, um and
under the auspices of the Big Bang theory, not the
TV show, but the actual theory. UM. At that moment,
all of the energy in the entire universe was created
right then, boom bam. Ever since that point that energy
(04:25):
has no more energy has been created and none of
that energy has been destroyed. But it changes states, that
changes shapes, that can be locked up in different um places.
It can be transferred from one place to another via
some natural ways like convection, conduction, radiation, UM. And like
I said, it can be stored and stuff like it
(04:45):
can be stored in your body. Right. Fat is potential
energy that can be burned and used for energy to
carry out work, which is all we're looking to do
is work. We use energy to carry out work, whether
it's digging a shovel or lighting a light bulb. That's
what energy does. It produces work, right, Yeah, okay, um,
(05:07):
we figured out along the way that we don't have
to wait around for radiation or convection or conduction to
do its thing to provide energy, because we'd have a
lot of waiting to do. We wouldn't be in the
computer age right now if it weren't for something called electricity,
which is basically how humans have figured out how to
(05:29):
harness converting energy from one type of another and then
transmitting it a very long distance. Because electricity isn't a
primary energy source like the sun or solar radiation or
nuclear energy or even the flow of water kinetic energy. Yeah,
it's and and it's a secondary energy source. It's a carrier,
(05:51):
that's right. So electricity carries energy from one point to another.
And if you understand that, you understand the very bay
cyst of while we're gonna talk about today, like we've
figured out how to generate electricity to carry energy to
produce work down the line, that's right. That's my intro
(06:12):
which is usually Mechanical energy is what's produced by machine. Yes,
so think about this, like, if you capture mechanical energy
like water spinning a turbine, which we'll talk about, and
Niagara falls, that's not gonna do anything to light your
light bulb, uh, two miles away, not by itself. No,
(06:34):
unless you connected to you send the the work produced,
the energy captured in Niagara falls down to your lightbulb.
And that's what we do using electricity, that's right. Uh, Yeah,
it's pretty simple. Actually, it seems complicated, but it's not. No,
just electrons moving around. Yeah, let's talk about electrons, man,
(06:56):
let's talk about the atom. We should we talk about
the history of this stuff. Yes, let's uh. Back in
the olden days, in ancient times, there were dudes messing
around with with energy and static electricity without even knowing
what they were doing. Right, they didn't understand it, But
that doesn't mean that they weren't playing around with it. No,
(07:18):
and getting zapped because they're messing mestatic electricity, that's right,
which will explain all that later too. But there was
one dude called Dallas of Melitas. He used a philosopher
in Greece and in six d BC. He has thought
to have been the first dude to mess around with
electro statics static electricity by rubbing amber with fur and
(07:41):
he noticed that dust and feathers and things were attracted
to it. He didn't know what the heck was going on,
but he knew something was up right, and the amber
plays a pretty big role. It's actually um amber. The
Latin er I'm sorry that Greek Greek Greek word for
amber is um electron with a K. That was like
the way heavy metal, you know, but that's so like
(08:04):
our Our word electricity is derived from the Greek word
for amber, from that first experiment with static electricity. Yeah,
and it was actually coined by dude name William Gilbert.
He was an Englishman, a physician, and he was studying
sort of the same things with static electricity. The melitas
was and he was the first person to say it's
(08:26):
electric and he saw these forces at work with an
exclamation point in his finger in the air. Yeah, and
we should probably we should probably differentiate like statically. There's
a couple of types of electricity. There's static electricity and
then there's current electricity, right, and current electricity is what
we are able to generate artificially. Static electricity exists in
(08:47):
nature just naturally, and that was the first experiments carried out.
Then there's other types of current electricity, like lightning. But
at this time when these people are messing with electric
or static electricity or um saying it's electric for the
first time, the concept of electricity was that it was fluid. Well,
(09:08):
it was fluid. He was on the right track, and
something is flowing. But they thought it was literally a
fluid which they called which in those days was called
a humor. And he said it leaves what he called then,
and uh, a flu the vm fluvium which is atmosphere
around it. When you create this rubbing action, it removes
(09:30):
that fluid. But it wasn't fluid. They were not dummies
back then, but they were just figuring it all out.
They weren't dummies because even Ben Franklin thought it was
a fluid. It was the prevailing idea concept of electricity.
UM and Ben Franklin and a couple of his contemporaries,
including a guy named Thomas Francois Dollabard, Um, we're studying
(09:52):
electricity big time. And it was when they really investigated
lightning that are understanding of current electricity started to take shape. Yeah,
the old story of Ben Franklin flying his kite may
or may not have happened. There are some people that
think that didn't happen. Now, But if if he didn't
(10:13):
do it, other people did. There were there were guys
who died carrying out that experiment. Yeah, but was definitely
carried out. I don't know if Ben Franklin did or not. Yeah,
that's that's sort of the story that he flew the
kite with the key, and some people think it either
didn't go down like that or didn't go down with
him at all. But it's a great story either way. Yeah,
and I think he at least proposed it that the experiment. Well, yeah,
(10:37):
and he was the first guy to say that electricity
has a positive and negative charge and that it flows
from positive to negative. He's a smart guy, very smart.
He's then there was another smart dude named Coulomb, Charles
Augustine de Coulomb, and he is the one that wrote
Coulomb's law, and he said charges light charges were l
(11:00):
opposite charges attract and that's kind of like the basis
for it all. Yeah, and the force of these charges
is proportional to the to their product. So if you
multiply the charges, they are going to be very strong
or cancel one another out or push one another away. Yeah.
He basically said, you can now calculate this because of
(11:20):
my handy dandy little law. Yeah, and with a boom,
he said boom, not bang. Okay, that came earlier. Later on,
a guy named J. J. Thompson said at a science conference, Hey,
I found something smaller than the atom. And everyone said,
(11:41):
silly man, adams are invisible. You can't it even means invisible,
you liar, And he said, no, I promise it's there's
something smaller. It's got a negative charge, and I'm gonna
call it a corpuscle. No he didn't. Yeah, it's Latin
for small bodies. And then I think, I don't know
who later said let's change it to electron. Yeah, it
sounds way cooler. But the discovery of the electron was
(12:04):
basically the birth of what we know as electricity today.
The understanding of the electron is what it's all about.
And would you say, like so before that time, I
guess he didn't understand the electron, but he understood electricity.
A guy named Michael Faraday was working on the case. Yeah,
(12:25):
basically everybody's like Ben Franklin electricity hand in hand. Really,
it's Michael Faraday, who's British um who really came to
lay the foundation for electrifying the world. He just he
created the first dynamo, which is a generator UM which
we'll talk about he um first electric motor. Yeah, he
(12:47):
just he got electricity and he explained it to other
people very well. Can you even fathom how smart these
people were to be that in the dark and figuring
all this sub tomic stuff out back then? Hats off, top,
Hats off to these guys, last chance garage at off
and back on. Like I I have trouble understanding it
(13:09):
now when it's explained through like Kids for Science website.
You know, I'm not inventing this figuring this stuff out
with the first time exactly. And it's a pretty dangerous
field to try to figure out blind to you know. Yeah,
I mean more than one scientist got a shock from
a laden jar. Oh yeah, and you can make those?
You do you make those in science class? Yeah? You
(13:29):
can make well, it's it's we should say a laden
jar is a very primitive capacitor. Use a metal rod
in a jar and nail that's sunk into like some water,
and it can store a charge. And I think Ben
Franklin's kite experiment attached the kite to or a rod
or something to a laden jar to store the charge too,
(13:50):
if that happened, right, But again, he did make the proposal,
it's whether or not he carried it out. Is it
all right? I guess Now we can get the atoms finally.
At Ms are very tiny and they make up molecules,
and molecules make up everything you see. Yeah, atoms are
the building block of matter, um and and atom. Remember
(14:11):
we're always talking about nature loves homeostasis, does it? Um,
you've got a balance that nature always seeks tries to
achieve it. Same with atoms or atoms are no exception.
I should say within an atom, you have nucleus which
is made up of protons and neutrons. Protons are positively
(14:33):
charged particles, neutrons are neutral. And then orbiting that nucleus
making the cool atom symbol are electrons and they're negatively charged.
And when you have an equal number of protons two electrons,
you have a neutral atom. There's no potential energy there.
(14:56):
It's just in balance. And uh, a lot of stuf
off is like that. A lot of stuff isn't balanced,
some stuff is not well. Some stuff falls out of
balance easier than other stuff. Well. Yeah, the electrons sometimes
they're super tightly bound to the atom and they don't
want to leave the house and they want to stick around.
(15:16):
Sometimes they're they're crazy teenagers and the slightest energy and
movement makes them jump off from the atom and just
say I want to go attach myself to something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And it depends on the material. And those types of
material that have either tightly connected or loosely connected atoms
(15:39):
either um end up conducting electricity very well or don't
conduct electricity very well, so they act as either electrical
conductors or electrical insulators. Yeah. Like if you pick up
a stick off the ground, it's electrons like stay close
to home, so it's not gonna conduct electricity. If you
pick up a metal rod, as electrons are crazy loose
(16:02):
and they like to go off and do those things
that teenage electrons do, and therefore it does collect conduct
electricity right very well under normal circumstances. When you pick
up that rod, or you pick up that stick. The
electrons are staying put no matter what. But we figured
out along the way, thanks to the work of all
of the people, from the Greeks to Faraday, to Ben
(16:25):
Franklin to your guy with the core puscle idea. Um
J J. Was his name, j J J J. Corp puscle.
I think it was Thompson. So thanks to the work
of all of these people, we figured out how to
knock electrons loose. And it's ingenious and simple, but it's
(16:46):
also very complex, and it involves the relationship between magnetism
and electricity, and we'll talk about that right after this message.
So Chuck, Yes, we're talking about knocking electronsluice, which is
ultimately the basis of producing electricity. Yeah, like when you
were a kid in elementary school, you probably did a
(17:07):
little balloon trick where you make static electricity and make
the balloon stick to your sweater. All you're doing, you're
rubbing that balloon on your sweater, and electrons are jumping
from that balloon onto your sweater. And now there are
two different charges going on. Because you're overcharged, the balloon
is now under charged, and because opposite charges attract it
(17:29):
sticks to your sweater, right, And that's static electricity, and
static you know, you have static and dynamic, and dynamic
indicates motion. Static indicates staying still um and they use
that to describe this type of electricity because the electrons
don't flow, they just sit there and wait for a connection.
Like when you touch something that's charged, like a door
(17:50):
knob after you've shuffled with your feet in socks over carpet.
When you touch that door knob, you're forming that connection,
and all of a sudden, the balance is achieved once more,
and the electrons flow like you're literally a conductor of
electricity in that moment. Right, So with current electricity, those
electrons move, they move along a conductive material, say like
(18:12):
copper y or something like that. That's a hot one. Right.
So let's talk about how you produce an electrical current, right, Okay,
but let's talk about generators and turbines and all that
awesome stuff. It sounds like you need to generate that
electricity what they generate toor right, I think that's what
generators are called. That why they're called that. Yeah, it's
(18:34):
funny just how basic some of these things are. Like
you say, a compute our right, But but you just
you've heard it so many times you take it for
granted it loses its meeting. It's like looking at a
word too frequently. Yeah, I think I think a lot
of these words are like that, like a generator, or
a core pustle, or a what's it called when he
(18:57):
stopped on the electricity, which we'll get to trans former?
It transforms something. But you say them so much, you're like,
what's the transformer? Do you know? Anyway? I've been reading
too much science for dummy something. Alright, So generators, Um, well,
I guess it all comes down to magnetism. Yes, in
the case of generators. And if you want to listen
(19:18):
to two shows Lightning and Magnetism before this one, it
might help you understand electricity a little bit more, right,
So just go listen to those. Do that right now
two hours. So, Um, what what I think fair Day
figured out was that because of this relationship between um,
a magnet and electricity, you can take a magnet and
(19:42):
you can move electrons in a say, conductive material. You
can knock the electrons loose basically using a magnet. Yeah,
it's like what happens when you attract a paper clip
to a magnet. It's just the transfer of electrons jumping around.
And you create a flow by flipping the polarity. And
you can do this by rotating metal right, say, like
(20:05):
a coiled copper within the two poles of a large magnet.
And when you do this, you're reversing polarity all of
a sudden, and you are knocking the electrons loose in
those coils. Um. And the way that you spin the
coils very quickly is by hooking the coils to say
(20:28):
a shaft. We kind of did this backwards. Let's start
at the beginning you want to, Okay, let's go to
Niagara Falls. Okay, back in eighteen George Westinghouse, who is
Nicola Tesla's boss, Which, by the way, if you want
to listen to another really good podcast, um, go listen
(20:49):
to that one, Nicola Tesla one. Remember it was all
about the A C. D C War between Tesla and
Edison episode animals. Yeah, it's pretty awful, jerk um. But
in eight George Westinghouse set up a hydroelectric power plant
along the Niagara Falls. And what he did was he
(21:10):
had a means of taking the movement of water, which
is kinetic energy. The water at the top of the
falls has potential energy, and then once it falls over,
that potential turns to kinetic energy. Well, Westinghouse set up
a turbine to catch this movement of water, right, which
is actual energy, and have that movement spin a turbine,
(21:33):
a propeller, a fan. Yeah, it's the same concept as
an old gristmill, except it's not creating energy. It's just
moving the stones that grind the wheat or corn, right
the gristmill is in this case it's it's capturing that
energy by or it's transferring it, we should say, by
converting that kinetic energy from the water into mechanical energy
(21:54):
spinning the the turbine. The turbine is connected to that
shaft I was talking about where we say, and they
changed course. And at the end of that shaft, which
is now spinning thanks to the turbine, thanks to the
movement of the water, is some coiled copper and that
coiled copper is spinning within those two magnets. That's the key, right,
And because of that the electrons are being knocked loose.
(22:15):
You have a power line leading from the coiled copper
out and all of a sudden, you have an electric current. Yeah.
And um, if you've ever been to the Hoover Dam
or something, you don't have to have a waterfall or
a river to make this thing work, if you That's
why they build dams. You stop up the water and
then at the base of the dam you have the
(22:35):
means to release that water and then it becomes that
flowing water. Right. And then also for thermal power plants,
they use nuclear power to create a nuclear reaction to
produce heat, or they burn coal to produce heat, and
then they use that heat the heat water, and then
they use that water to create steam, and then that
steam turns a turbine. And these are all just different methods,
(23:00):
whether it's solar or steam or new nuclear. Almost said it,
which is weird because I definitely don't say it that way. Well,
you you're very excited. I think I said enough as
a joke, right that it slips in. But anyway, all
those are just means to turn that turbine, right, And
all it is is you're using that stored energy or
(23:21):
that kinetic energy like over here to create electricity so
that you can transfer it into work down the line.
That's right. It's so cool. Yeah, And this article. We
used a few different articles for this one, like we said,
including some science for kids websites, which by the way,
I highly recommend if you don't get something. Yeah, it's
(23:42):
a great place to go visit or these kids websites
because they break it down like super simply because kids
are dumb. But in our article, it uh, it describes
a generator UM as if it was a water and
a pump, which made a lot of sense to me. UM.
The generator is the pump, but instead of pushing water
(24:03):
through a pipe, it's pushing electrons down a line power line,
and that whole like using water as an analogy UM
for electricity fits very well. Yeah, but you need something
to push it. It's not it's not a self pusher,
so you need that force, and that force is voltage. Yeah,
(24:24):
it's electromotive force. It's the same with water, like UM,
you have water pressure that forces the water down the line, right,
And with electricity you have a force that moves electricity
and its voltage, like you said, measured in volts, and
the electrical current UM is measured in amps, and the
amps represent the total number of electrons flowing through any
(24:47):
one point of a circuit in any every second, and
there's a lot of them. And if you have voltage
and you add that to current, which is amps, you
get power, which is what's right, And I think it's
multiplied by it. Oh really, yeah it is. Okay, I
(25:07):
wasn't even thinking of it as a math formula, but
it is. It is a math formula. And the reason
why it's a math formula is because they're related. Like
you can flip flop them, you can adjust them. Um.
And that's the whole basis of industrial power transmission, that
which will get to later. Yeah, And I know it
sounds a little confusing with the volts, amps and watts,
(25:29):
but they are all different. Like if you said, you
know that guy was shocked and he had a hundred
and twenty volts uh coursing through his body, that's not
true at all, um, because the vault is the force
and he's got he's got amps coursing through his body.
But you'd be a huge geek to point it out
to someone. Someone said that, And a good rule of
(25:49):
them is the higher the vaults, the more dangerous the shock,
which is why in America, UM most outlets and homes
are two are a hundred and twenty volt where if
you touch it, you're gonna feel it, but it's probably
not going to kill you. In the United States is
one twenty, But it's different in other countries, right, which
is why like European appliance can be plugged into an
(26:12):
American appliance because you got to get those adapters. Yeah. So, UM,
you were talking about current, which is the number of
electron flowing through a circuit. You have UM the volts,
which is the force or pressure that's pushing them down
the line, and then you have UM those two multiplied
(26:36):
by one another to create watts, which is power. You
also there's one there's another um factor to electrical currents UM,
and that is resistance. Oh yeah, we didn't talk about that,
so we acted like it was all either an insulator
or conductor. But you can be a resistor. Well, I
mean everything, everything has a certain level of resistance. Yeah,
(26:58):
but if you're an official resistor, that means current moves,
it just doesn't move like as fast as it might
in metal, or not at all in wood. Yeah, or
glass is another good resistor insulator UM, and so so
so is rubber. But even something is like conductive is
copper wire has a certain amount of resistance. And again
(27:20):
that water flowing analogy comes into place like if you
pump like some water really really hard to try to
get a lot of water through a very small pipe,
it's still not going to come out very high, very
fast because you're trying to force too much water through
that that little pipe. So in the exact same way
(27:42):
a thin wire where you're trying to push a lot
of amps through and a lot of bolts through, Uh,
it's going to resist. And when you when you have
resistance in an electrical circuit, you have UM what you
lose some of those electrons that are flowing in the
form of heat, which is produced by electrons bumping up
against other atoms that aren't sharing their their electrons UM.
(28:05):
And that's the result of friction and resistance is measured
in Ohm's h M. Should we talk about circuits, Yeah,
we were there. I think so all this is well
and good. That's uh. You know, you can supply power
and we'll talk about this more in detail to two
homes from a power plant, UM. But you can also
(28:27):
have a little battery supplying that electrical energy to a iPhone,
let's say. And in that case, you need something called
a circuit, which is basically just a closed loop that
allows the electrons to travel. And in most electronics it's
like like you said, like copper wire maybe, and it
(28:48):
travels from you know, there's a switch that turns it
on and off um, which is why a circuit is
called a circuit breaker. Like if you break that circuit
by turning and switch off, or if the wire like
snaps or something, it's gonna no more electrons are gonna
be flowing, right, because there's the and the reason they're
not gonna be flowing any longer is because the positive
(29:10):
pole and the negative poll from that circuit are no
longer connected. Another way to look at voltage is that
it is the difference between uh electrons on one side
and electrons on another side of a circuit. And remember
we talked about nature always wanting balance. Electrons flow from
negative to positive rights, and as they flow, the reason
(29:35):
they're flowing. The whole reason they're moving at all is
because there are not as many electrons on the positive
side as there are on the negative side, so they
want to leave the negative side to go achieve balance
on the positive side and ultimately make whatever circuit it's
traveling neutral. You stick something in that circuit and as
as electrons are moving from the negative side to the
(29:57):
positive side. Because again electricity is just the flow of electrons,
you can convert that movement into productive work. Yeah, mechanical energy, right,
And anything you attach onto a circuit to exploit that
flow of electrons for work is called the load. Yeah.
It could be a lightbulb or you know whatever. Whatever
(30:18):
mechanical energy you're trying to create is your load. And
there's all sorts of things you can do by attaching
a load to a circuit, like a light bulb. UM.
A light bulb basically uses uh that electricity flow to
um flow into a resistant filament very thin wire that
(30:38):
purposely resists that flow of electricity, generating heat and then
turn heating up to produce light. That's how a light
bulb works. You can also recharge batteries, which go in
and force electrons back into the negative position so that
the batteries recharge and those electrons are ready to flow
again once you connect the circuit. UM. There is also
(31:00):
appliances that use resistors to produce heat, like a hair
dryer or a toaster. There's all sorts of stuff you
you can do to connect into the circuit, but it's
all the same whether it's a battery or a toaster
or a whole house, if you want to look at
it that way, it's you're plugging a load onto an
electrical circuit and exploiting the flow of electrons. Yeah, and
(31:24):
I kind of misspoke a minute ago when I said
it's creating the mechanical energy. You need a motor to
actually do that. So if you have an electric drill,
that's great that you have electrons flowing, but it's not
going to turn anything unless you have that motor. And
electric motor is basically just a cylinder, uh, stuffed with
magnets around the edge. And if you've ever used an
(31:44):
electric drill and you fire it up, when you look
and seeing the vents, you can actually see sparks. It's
pretty cool. It's very cool. It's like those little guns
you used to get at the circus when you're yeah, god,
I love those. Um. So it's packed with those magnets
around the edge, and in the middle you've got your core,
which is, you know, like an iron wire and uh,
it's wrapped around you know, the coppers wrapped around the edges.
(32:08):
So electricity flows to that core, creates magnetism, and then
that pushes against the outer cylinder and makes that motor
spin around. And then that's where you get your mechanical energy, right,
and uh, an electric motor is probably the best example
of how you're converting um energy from one form to
another and then reconverting it because an electric motor is
(32:31):
basically a generator in reverse. Yeah, And so you use
that mechanical energy the spinning of the turbine down the line,
and convert it in your electric drill back into mechanical
energy to spin spin the drill. And in between is
that flow of electrons that's causing the whole thing, or
that's carrying that energy from point A to point b
core puscles. There's one other there's one other thing. Um
(32:54):
if you look at a plug that you're plugging an
appliance into, because again you're just attaching a load to
that flow of electrons and diverting it through your appliance
and then it goes back on its merry way. Right.
If you look at a plug, sometimes you'll see three
prongs and the third prong, the one on the bottom
seems different from the other ones. It's round, and that
(33:16):
is actually a grounding wire. Very important, very very important,
because as awesome as we've gotten with producing and directing electricity,
we can't control the amount of electrons that flow through
an outlet to down to a single electron, and so
there's such a thing as leakage of electrons, which is crazy.
(33:38):
And there's also um electrical build up that can happen
where if you're not using all of the um amps
in through an appliance, the residual amps can build up
and they charge the appliance and again, as with static electricity,
charges just sitting there waiting to be neutralized, sometimes through you,
(34:00):
which can make it very dangerous. To prevent this, they
have they connect the appliance through either that third prong
in a plug or through an actual grounding wire to
a copper wire that's driven into the ground. And that's
where the word comes from ground. You're actually transferring that
(34:20):
residual um electric electric energy to the ground, which is
basically an infinite reservoir for charge of dispersal to earth. Yeah,
So like when you look at a power line and
you see that bare wire coming down from the parallel
line and driven into the ground by a steak that
is the ground, and it goes down like six or
(34:42):
ten feet. Or if you look at every house, you're
gonna see near the meter, the electrical meter, you're gonna
see a probably a copper rod driven into the ground,
and that's your house is ground. Exactly the same thing
with a lightning rod. It's a ground for your entire house,
so that the lightning doesn't go through your how as
it goes through the lightning rod. And the point of
(35:02):
all of those is that the earth is it can
take it. Go ahead and give it as many electrical
shocks as you want. It's gonna be fine, so we think.
And it's a very good it's very good at just
dispersing those charges. So that's what grounding comes from. Very
important stuff. Yeah, and uh, we mentioned transformers earlier. Um
(35:22):
power plants create massive amounts of electricity and you can't
just shoot that down a power line and straight into
a house because it will blow up everything in your
in your home immediately. But they do need that kind
of juice in order to transfer like hundreds of miles
away from the power plant. You know, if you don't
(35:42):
live close, it's still got to get to you. So
the way they do that as new transformers, they transmit
the power with a lot of voltage, so more force,
less amperage, less resistance, less resistance, which means you lose less.
And then once it you know, they stop it down
along the way and by the time it gets your home,
it's transformed down to here in the United States and
(36:04):
twenty volts more elsewhere. Nights nice and safe, right, And
then you just plug your appliance into it and all
of a sudden that electrical energy transmits to your coaster.
Strudal being warmed, your hot pocket with tainted meats. That yeah,
(36:24):
remember that whole horsemade thing with Ikea the last couple
of years. It wasn't just Ikea, but they were definitely
called out, maybe most strongly for I think the hot
pockets too. They called it unsound meat, which is just
a word that sounds weird in front of meat. Unsound
is not you don't want to go near it, unsound, unclean,
It's biblical, all right. So now I think we even
(36:44):
though we've covered it in the Tesla podcast, we do
need to go over a C D C a little
bit like go listen to that podcast. That's a great one.
Best Australian band of all time. They were good. Yeah, yeah,
are good, David? Are they still around? Yeah? Man, David
Bowie played a pretty mean Tesla. No, I'm not telling
my Teslam on my A C d C okay. Uh
(37:07):
was all right? And they're not around. That's how I
was really confused. I was more confused about that than
I was by any aspect of electricity. I'm like, yeah, man,
of course they're around anyone in the Australian Uh yeah, No,
A C DC is great and they're still around. Huh
yeah there. I think you're putting an album together right now.
Given for them, I'll bet it sounds exactly like all
(37:27):
the rest. It's still rocks blues based rock. Uh in
valure velvet. Yes. So there was a battle being waged
between Tesla and Edison, and Tesla was all about the
A C current alternating current. Edison, as we know, said no, no, no,
that's far too dangerous and I'll prove this to you
by electrocuting animals and dogs and cats and even an
(37:50):
elephant named topsy and Um. And he was alleged to
have helped botch the first electrocution by electric chair by
a state Oh yeah, um. I don't remember the details
of that, but it's definitely in our our episode on
Exploded the guy. Yeah, he was a real jerk, remember, um.
And I think we remember I remember talking about there
(38:11):
should be a movie too about that that battle. Yeah.
I can't believe there's not. It sounds super nerdy, but
it would actually be interesting to go over. Well these
things degreed. So batteries these days use direct current power
DC power, and that means the positive and negative terminals
are always positive and negative, and it always electricity always
(38:32):
flows in the same direction from negative depositives. It does
not alternate. Yeah, just think about it this way. Uh,
negative and electrons negative. So in any terminal, that's where
all the negative charges vibes, and then positive is where
the electrons want to be because they're seeking to balance
it out and create neutral so that there's no pole
(38:53):
good vibes, yeah, or the very least so so vibes,
but not negative no. Um. And then you have alternating
current or a C, which means the current reverses sixty
times per second here in the US fifty times per second.
In Europe, So it's just reversing back and forth, alternating
(39:14):
that current. And uh, I guess, so who went out
in the end Tesla um on a large scale. Well, yeah,
I mean that's does Edison has his batteries. I guess
he could throw it up, which are pretty important too.
But yeah, I think we kind of came out in
the same way on that episode. They both kind of won. Yeah,
(39:37):
but Tesla was the cooler dude. Although Tesla died penniless
in New York in the nineteen forties and Edison died
of rich fat guy, he died of consumption and gout.
No has been Franklin. I guess we can finish with um.
If you get your power bill and you're amazed and
(39:57):
you wonder how they calculate this stuff, it's pretty easy.
Like we said here in the US, we deliver electricity
into your home at a hundred and twenty volts, So
you gotta remember that one too. It's important. Our article
uses a space heater as an example, which I think
is pretty good. You plug in that space heater. Let's
say it's the only thing going in your house, which
is not realistic, but go with me. You plug in
(40:19):
the space heater and it comes out to ten amps.
So you multiply that ten times undred and twenty because
that's your voltage, and you have got twelve hundred watts
of heat or one point to kill a watts. Yes,
because that's how the power company is going to measure it,
because they deal in big chunks. And if you leave
(40:41):
that heater on for an hour, you just used one
point to kill a watt hours, which is how you're build. Yeah,
and if they charge you a dime per kilo hot hour,
it's gonna cost you twelve cents an hour to run
that space heater. Right, Pretty simple and neat. And that's
why when you go to buy an appliance you should
look at that little tag that says how many kill
a wat hours you're gonna be burning? That's right, The
(41:02):
lower the better. So electricity, Huh, you got anything else? No,
don't play around with it, No, don't. Uh. Yes. I
always wear rubber sold shoes because rubber is an insulator.
It is why because it hangs on to its electrons,
the atoms that make up rubber. It's just that simple. Uh.
(41:22):
If you want to know more about electricity, you can
type that word in the search part how stuff works
dot Com. You can also go on all sorts of
kids science sites and find out more about it too.
And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this rare birthday shout out. Hey, guys,
my name is Pearl, and I just want to tell
(41:43):
you how much a fan I am of your show.
I was introduced to the podcast by my best friend Molly.
We've been best friends for twelve years, and many of
our conversations begin by commenting on the podcast. For example,
we could not stop laughing at your nineteen twenties voice.
Towards the end the Underground Tunnels episode, we laughed over
and over that I think she's talking about this one
(42:05):
see Electricity, Tesla Edison killing animals. All right, that was
for you, Molly and Pearl. Whenever we're in the car together,
we find a podcast of yours to listen to so
we can enjoy it together. I was wondering if you
could help her out. Molly's twenty six birthday is April ninth,
and I think it would be totally awesome birthday gift
(42:25):
if you would send her a shout out during listener
mail I would be forever in your debt. Thanks for
doing the podcast. I'm a middle school teacher who always
listens during my prep periods and so happy birthday, Molly,
Happy twenty six. That should be close. Yeah, happy birthday
to April Night. That was very nice of us, and
thank you Pearl Webb in Chicago. And your friendship means
(42:47):
a lot to us. Yeah, you know, your friendship with
one another. Yeah, and then conversely through us all together
in their car. Yeah. Well, if you want to get
some sort of shout out sometimes Chuck uh Danes too,
he's very nice. Um. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
(43:09):
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot
com and as I always, join us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there.
Chuck's wearing his Last Chance garage hat, which means that
all is right with the world. You know, Chuck's not
(00:22):
wearing that hat. Who knows what's going on? There's I
thought a loss this thing. Yeah, yeah, I think I
vaguely remember that that freak was the Delta and everything,
and I was like, oh, here it is. It's on
my head in your back pocket with Bruce Springsteen. That's right. Uh,
(00:42):
how you doing great? Um? Chuck, Yes, I think you
knew this, but I'm not sure everybody listening does. Um.
If you if you like not you, Chuck put people
out there. I'm speaking to you now. If you like
hanging out with us on the podcast, you can hang
out with this outside of the podcast too. You know.
Some people are like, can you release a podcast every day?
No we can't, but we do hang out on Twitter,
(01:03):
Facebook that kind of thing every day. Yes, we do
every day. Our Twitter handle is s y SK podcast
Facebook dot com, Slash Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, we're
trying to get up over a hundred thousand likes on Facebook,
so close. So if you could like us and then
just hide us if you don't like us, I don't
even think you need to hide us, like I think
(01:24):
eight percent of people get any given posts. It varies
something like that though, right, So, I mean I think
you will seek us out though, rather than hiding us
because it's in an entertaining page. We like to deliver
the goods. Yeah, and then of course you can hang
out with us on our website stuff you should know
dot com where we have blogs, slide shows, we post
our podcasts there, videos, it's like the the Josh and
(01:48):
Chuck video network. Agreed. Okay, so they're all right. Now
let's talk about electricity. Electricity, electricity. I've had the talking
Head song in my head, which one electricity where all
these sees or little dots. I thought you're gonna say
once in a lifetime. No, that's what is that called?
(02:10):
Once in a lifetime? Yeah? Uh yeah, I've been singing
the Schoolhouse Rock electricity song over and over in my head.
What about the electric company theme song? M I haven't
been singing that, but do you remember it? Yeah? That
was that was Electric Company over Sesame Street. Even Oh, yeah,
I didn't think there had to be like a you know,
(02:31):
I didn't know it was like the Stones or the Beatles.
You know. No, it's uh in the correct answer, there's
the Who. By the way, what do you mean is
that right now? I mean, yeah, I love the Who,
but I'm with you. I don't see the need to
rank things like that. Well, Plus, the Electric Company came
(02:52):
on after Sesame Street. I think, yeah, excwed slightly older.
I think Sesame Street to me felt like, you know,
seven eight year olds. Electric companies were like eight, nine, ten, twelve.
And then even younger than Sesame Street was pin Wheel
if I remember correctly, that was after your time. Pinwell
was pretty cute. It was like little kids, and the
Sesame Street was like little kids, and then Electric Company
(03:14):
was like cool and Romper Room was kind of pre
Sesame Street. Even so, Was that the one with Reggedy,
Ann and Andy? I don't remember. I just remember it was.
It's very immature, Yeah, three childish you think Reggedy, Ann
and Andy were in that? Well, at any rate, we've
angered enough people now, I know. Uh, I have an
intro for this one. Okay, you ready, about thirteen point
(03:38):
eight billion years ago, a little something called the Big
Bang happened and the universe was created, so says you.
So this there's a lot of people. You know, we
weren't around. Nobody saw it, but it's been detected and
it's strongly suspected by scientists that the universe is thirteen
point eight billion years old and that it came from
(04:01):
something called the Big Bang, which, by the way, I
would love to do an episode on Okay, um and
under the auspices of the Big Bang theory, not the
TV show, but the actual theory. UM. At that moment,
all of the energy in the entire universe was created
right then, boom bam. Ever since that point that energy
(04:25):
has no more energy has been created and none of
that energy has been destroyed. But it changes states, that
changes shapes, that can be locked up in different um places.
It can be transferred from one place to another via
some natural ways like convection, conduction, radiation, UM. And like
I said, it can be stored and stuff like it
(04:45):
can be stored in your body. Right. Fat is potential
energy that can be burned and used for energy to
carry out work, which is all we're looking to do
is work. We use energy to carry out work, whether
it's digging a shovel or lighting a light bulb. That's
what energy does. It produces work, right, Yeah, okay, um,
(05:07):
we figured out along the way that we don't have
to wait around for radiation or convection or conduction to
do its thing to provide energy, because we'd have a
lot of waiting to do. We wouldn't be in the
computer age right now if it weren't for something called electricity,
which is basically how humans have figured out how to
(05:29):
harness converting energy from one type of another and then
transmitting it a very long distance. Because electricity isn't a
primary energy source like the sun or solar radiation or
nuclear energy or even the flow of water kinetic energy. Yeah,
it's and and it's a secondary energy source. It's a carrier,
(05:51):
that's right. So electricity carries energy from one point to another.
And if you understand that, you understand the very bay
cyst of while we're gonna talk about today, like we've
figured out how to generate electricity to carry energy to
produce work down the line, that's right. That's my intro
(06:12):
which is usually Mechanical energy is what's produced by machine. Yes,
so think about this, like, if you capture mechanical energy
like water spinning a turbine, which we'll talk about, and
Niagara falls, that's not gonna do anything to light your
light bulb, uh, two miles away, not by itself. No,
(06:34):
unless you connected to you send the the work produced,
the energy captured in Niagara falls down to your lightbulb.
And that's what we do using electricity, that's right. Uh, Yeah,
it's pretty simple. Actually, it seems complicated, but it's not. No,
just electrons moving around. Yeah, let's talk about electrons, man,
(06:56):
let's talk about the atom. We should we talk about
the history of this stuff. Yes, let's uh. Back in
the olden days, in ancient times, there were dudes messing
around with with energy and static electricity without even knowing
what they were doing. Right, they didn't understand it, But
that doesn't mean that they weren't playing around with it. No,
(07:18):
and getting zapped because they're messing mestatic electricity, that's right,
which will explain all that later too. But there was
one dude called Dallas of Melitas. He used a philosopher
in Greece and in six d BC. He has thought
to have been the first dude to mess around with
electro statics static electricity by rubbing amber with fur and
(07:41):
he noticed that dust and feathers and things were attracted
to it. He didn't know what the heck was going on,
but he knew something was up right, and the amber
plays a pretty big role. It's actually um amber. The
Latin er I'm sorry that Greek Greek Greek word for
amber is um electron with a K. That was like
the way heavy metal, you know, but that's so like
(08:04):
our Our word electricity is derived from the Greek word
for amber, from that first experiment with static electricity. Yeah,
and it was actually coined by dude name William Gilbert.
He was an Englishman, a physician, and he was studying
sort of the same things with static electricity. The melitas
was and he was the first person to say it's
(08:26):
electric and he saw these forces at work with an
exclamation point in his finger in the air. Yeah, and
we should probably we should probably differentiate like statically. There's
a couple of types of electricity. There's static electricity and
then there's current electricity, right, and current electricity is what
we are able to generate artificially. Static electricity exists in
(08:47):
nature just naturally, and that was the first experiments carried out.
Then there's other types of current electricity, like lightning. But
at this time when these people are messing with electric
or static electricity or um saying it's electric for the
first time, the concept of electricity was that it was fluid. Well,
(09:08):
it was fluid. He was on the right track, and
something is flowing. But they thought it was literally a
fluid which they called which in those days was called
a humor. And he said it leaves what he called then,
and uh, a flu the vm fluvium which is atmosphere
around it. When you create this rubbing action, it removes
(09:30):
that fluid. But it wasn't fluid. They were not dummies
back then, but they were just figuring it all out.
They weren't dummies because even Ben Franklin thought it was
a fluid. It was the prevailing idea concept of electricity.
UM and Ben Franklin and a couple of his contemporaries,
including a guy named Thomas Francois Dollabard, Um, we're studying
(09:52):
electricity big time. And it was when they really investigated
lightning that are understanding of current electricity started to take shape. Yeah,
the old story of Ben Franklin flying his kite may
or may not have happened. There are some people that
think that didn't happen. Now, But if if he didn't
(10:13):
do it, other people did. There were there were guys
who died carrying out that experiment. Yeah, but was definitely
carried out. I don't know if Ben Franklin did or not. Yeah,
that's that's sort of the story that he flew the
kite with the key, and some people think it either
didn't go down like that or didn't go down with
him at all. But it's a great story either way. Yeah,
and I think he at least proposed it that the experiment. Well, yeah,
(10:37):
and he was the first guy to say that electricity
has a positive and negative charge and that it flows
from positive to negative. He's a smart guy, very smart.
He's then there was another smart dude named Coulomb, Charles
Augustine de Coulomb, and he is the one that wrote
Coulomb's law, and he said charges light charges were l
(11:00):
opposite charges attract and that's kind of like the basis
for it all. Yeah, and the force of these charges
is proportional to the to their product. So if you
multiply the charges, they are going to be very strong
or cancel one another out or push one another away. Yeah.
He basically said, you can now calculate this because of
(11:20):
my handy dandy little law. Yeah, and with a boom,
he said boom, not bang. Okay, that came earlier. Later on,
a guy named J. J. Thompson said at a science conference, Hey,
I found something smaller than the atom. And everyone said,
(11:41):
silly man, adams are invisible. You can't it even means invisible,
you liar, And he said, no, I promise it's there's
something smaller. It's got a negative charge, and I'm gonna
call it a corpuscle. No he didn't. Yeah, it's Latin
for small bodies. And then I think, I don't know
who later said let's change it to electron. Yeah, it
sounds way cooler. But the discovery of the electron was
(12:04):
basically the birth of what we know as electricity today.
The understanding of the electron is what it's all about.
And would you say, like so before that time, I
guess he didn't understand the electron, but he understood electricity.
A guy named Michael Faraday was working on the case. Yeah,
(12:25):
basically everybody's like Ben Franklin electricity hand in hand. Really,
it's Michael Faraday, who's British um who really came to
lay the foundation for electrifying the world. He just he
created the first dynamo, which is a generator UM which
we'll talk about he um first electric motor. Yeah, he
(12:47):
just he got electricity and he explained it to other
people very well. Can you even fathom how smart these
people were to be that in the dark and figuring
all this sub tomic stuff out back then? Hats off, top,
Hats off to these guys, last chance garage at off
and back on. Like I I have trouble understanding it
(13:09):
now when it's explained through like Kids for Science website.
You know, I'm not inventing this figuring this stuff out
with the first time exactly. And it's a pretty dangerous
field to try to figure out blind to you know. Yeah,
I mean more than one scientist got a shock from
a laden jar. Oh yeah, and you can make those?
You do you make those in science class? Yeah? You
(13:29):
can make well, it's it's we should say a laden
jar is a very primitive capacitor. Use a metal rod
in a jar and nail that's sunk into like some water,
and it can store a charge. And I think Ben
Franklin's kite experiment attached the kite to or a rod
or something to a laden jar to store the charge too,
(13:50):
if that happened, right, But again, he did make the proposal,
it's whether or not he carried it out. Is it
all right? I guess Now we can get the atoms finally.
At Ms are very tiny and they make up molecules,
and molecules make up everything you see. Yeah, atoms are
the building block of matter, um and and atom. Remember
(14:11):
we're always talking about nature loves homeostasis, does it? Um,
you've got a balance that nature always seeks tries to
achieve it. Same with atoms or atoms are no exception.
I should say within an atom, you have nucleus which
is made up of protons and neutrons. Protons are positively
(14:33):
charged particles, neutrons are neutral. And then orbiting that nucleus
making the cool atom symbol are electrons and they're negatively charged.
And when you have an equal number of protons two electrons,
you have a neutral atom. There's no potential energy there.
(14:56):
It's just in balance. And uh, a lot of stuf
off is like that. A lot of stuff isn't balanced,
some stuff is not well. Some stuff falls out of
balance easier than other stuff. Well. Yeah, the electrons sometimes
they're super tightly bound to the atom and they don't
want to leave the house and they want to stick around.
(15:16):
Sometimes they're they're crazy teenagers and the slightest energy and
movement makes them jump off from the atom and just
say I want to go attach myself to something else. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And it depends on the material. And those types of
material that have either tightly connected or loosely connected atoms
(15:39):
either um end up conducting electricity very well or don't
conduct electricity very well, so they act as either electrical
conductors or electrical insulators. Yeah. Like if you pick up
a stick off the ground, it's electrons like stay close
to home, so it's not gonna conduct electricity. If you
pick up a metal rod, as electrons are crazy loose
(16:02):
and they like to go off and do those things
that teenage electrons do, and therefore it does collect conduct
electricity right very well under normal circumstances. When you pick
up that rod, or you pick up that stick. The
electrons are staying put no matter what. But we figured
out along the way, thanks to the work of all
of the people, from the Greeks to Faraday, to Ben
(16:25):
Franklin to your guy with the core puscle idea. Um
J J. Was his name, j J J J. Corp puscle.
I think it was Thompson. So thanks to the work
of all of these people, we figured out how to
knock electrons loose. And it's ingenious and simple, but it's
(16:46):
also very complex, and it involves the relationship between magnetism
and electricity, and we'll talk about that right after this message.
So Chuck, Yes, we're talking about knocking electronsluice, which is
ultimately the basis of producing electricity. Yeah, like when you
were a kid in elementary school, you probably did a
(17:07):
little balloon trick where you make static electricity and make
the balloon stick to your sweater. All you're doing, you're
rubbing that balloon on your sweater, and electrons are jumping
from that balloon onto your sweater. And now there are
two different charges going on. Because you're overcharged, the balloon
is now under charged, and because opposite charges attract it
(17:29):
sticks to your sweater, right, And that's static electricity, and
static you know, you have static and dynamic, and dynamic
indicates motion. Static indicates staying still um and they use
that to describe this type of electricity because the electrons
don't flow, they just sit there and wait for a connection.
Like when you touch something that's charged, like a door
(17:50):
knob after you've shuffled with your feet in socks over carpet.
When you touch that door knob, you're forming that connection,
and all of a sudden, the balance is achieved once more,
and the electrons flow like you're literally a conductor of
electricity in that moment. Right, So with current electricity, those
electrons move, they move along a conductive material, say like
(18:12):
copper y or something like that. That's a hot one. Right.
So let's talk about how you produce an electrical current, right, Okay,
but let's talk about generators and turbines and all that
awesome stuff. It sounds like you need to generate that
electricity what they generate toor right, I think that's what
generators are called. That why they're called that. Yeah, it's
(18:34):
funny just how basic some of these things are. Like
you say, a compute our right, But but you just
you've heard it so many times you take it for
granted it loses its meeting. It's like looking at a
word too frequently. Yeah, I think I think a lot
of these words are like that, like a generator, or
a core pustle, or a what's it called when he
(18:57):
stopped on the electricity, which we'll get to trans former?
It transforms something. But you say them so much, you're like,
what's the transformer? Do you know? Anyway? I've been reading
too much science for dummy something. Alright, So generators, Um, well,
I guess it all comes down to magnetism. Yes, in
the case of generators. And if you want to listen
(19:18):
to two shows Lightning and Magnetism before this one, it
might help you understand electricity a little bit more, right,
So just go listen to those. Do that right now
two hours. So, Um, what what I think fair Day
figured out was that because of this relationship between um,
a magnet and electricity, you can take a magnet and
(19:42):
you can move electrons in a say, conductive material. You
can knock the electrons loose basically using a magnet. Yeah,
it's like what happens when you attract a paper clip
to a magnet. It's just the transfer of electrons jumping around.
And you create a flow by flipping the polarity. And
you can do this by rotating metal right, say, like
(20:05):
a coiled copper within the two poles of a large magnet.
And when you do this, you're reversing polarity all of
a sudden, and you are knocking the electrons loose in
those coils. Um. And the way that you spin the
coils very quickly is by hooking the coils to say
(20:28):
a shaft. We kind of did this backwards. Let's start
at the beginning you want to, Okay, let's go to
Niagara Falls. Okay, back in eighteen George Westinghouse, who is
Nicola Tesla's boss, Which, by the way, if you want
to listen to another really good podcast, um, go listen
(20:49):
to that one, Nicola Tesla one. Remember it was all
about the A C. D C War between Tesla and
Edison episode animals. Yeah, it's pretty awful, jerk um. But
in eight George Westinghouse set up a hydroelectric power plant
along the Niagara Falls. And what he did was he
(21:10):
had a means of taking the movement of water, which
is kinetic energy. The water at the top of the
falls has potential energy, and then once it falls over,
that potential turns to kinetic energy. Well, Westinghouse set up
a turbine to catch this movement of water, right, which
is actual energy, and have that movement spin a turbine,
(21:33):
a propeller, a fan. Yeah, it's the same concept as
an old gristmill, except it's not creating energy. It's just
moving the stones that grind the wheat or corn, right
the gristmill is in this case it's it's capturing that
energy by or it's transferring it, we should say, by
converting that kinetic energy from the water into mechanical energy
(21:54):
spinning the the turbine. The turbine is connected to that
shaft I was talking about where we say, and they
changed course. And at the end of that shaft, which
is now spinning thanks to the turbine, thanks to the
movement of the water, is some coiled copper and that
coiled copper is spinning within those two magnets. That's the key, right,
And because of that the electrons are being knocked loose.
(22:15):
You have a power line leading from the coiled copper
out and all of a sudden, you have an electric current. Yeah.
And um, if you've ever been to the Hoover Dam
or something, you don't have to have a waterfall or
a river to make this thing work, if you That's
why they build dams. You stop up the water and
then at the base of the dam you have the
(22:35):
means to release that water and then it becomes that
flowing water. Right. And then also for thermal power plants,
they use nuclear power to create a nuclear reaction to
produce heat, or they burn coal to produce heat, and
then they use that heat the heat water, and then
they use that water to create steam, and then that
steam turns a turbine. And these are all just different methods,
(23:00):
whether it's solar or steam or new nuclear. Almost said it,
which is weird because I definitely don't say it that way. Well,
you you're very excited. I think I said enough as
a joke, right that it slips in. But anyway, all
those are just means to turn that turbine, right, And
all it is is you're using that stored energy or
(23:21):
that kinetic energy like over here to create electricity so
that you can transfer it into work down the line.
That's right. It's so cool. Yeah, And this article. We
used a few different articles for this one, like we said,
including some science for kids websites, which by the way,
I highly recommend if you don't get something. Yeah, it's
(23:42):
a great place to go visit or these kids websites
because they break it down like super simply because kids
are dumb. But in our article, it uh, it describes
a generator UM as if it was a water and
a pump, which made a lot of sense to me. UM.
The generator is the pump, but instead of pushing water
(24:03):
through a pipe, it's pushing electrons down a line power line,
and that whole like using water as an analogy UM
for electricity fits very well. Yeah, but you need something
to push it. It's not it's not a self pusher,
so you need that force, and that force is voltage. Yeah,
(24:24):
it's electromotive force. It's the same with water, like UM,
you have water pressure that forces the water down the line, right,
And with electricity you have a force that moves electricity
and its voltage, like you said, measured in volts, and
the electrical current UM is measured in amps, and the
amps represent the total number of electrons flowing through any
(24:47):
one point of a circuit in any every second, and
there's a lot of them. And if you have voltage
and you add that to current, which is amps, you
get power, which is what's right, And I think it's
multiplied by it. Oh really, yeah it is. Okay, I
(25:07):
wasn't even thinking of it as a math formula, but
it is. It is a math formula. And the reason
why it's a math formula is because they're related. Like
you can flip flop them, you can adjust them. Um.
And that's the whole basis of industrial power transmission, that
which will get to later. Yeah, And I know it
sounds a little confusing with the volts, amps and watts,
(25:29):
but they are all different. Like if you said, you
know that guy was shocked and he had a hundred
and twenty volts uh coursing through his body, that's not
true at all, um, because the vault is the force
and he's got he's got amps coursing through his body.
But you'd be a huge geek to point it out
to someone. Someone said that, And a good rule of
(25:49):
them is the higher the vaults, the more dangerous the shock,
which is why in America, UM most outlets and homes
are two are a hundred and twenty volt where if
you touch it, you're gonna feel it, but it's probably
not going to kill you. In the United States is
one twenty, But it's different in other countries, right, which
is why like European appliance can be plugged into an
(26:12):
American appliance because you got to get those adapters. Yeah. So, UM,
you were talking about current, which is the number of
electron flowing through a circuit. You have UM the volts,
which is the force or pressure that's pushing them down
the line, and then you have UM those two multiplied
(26:36):
by one another to create watts, which is power. You
also there's one there's another um factor to electrical currents UM,
and that is resistance. Oh yeah, we didn't talk about that,
so we acted like it was all either an insulator
or conductor. But you can be a resistor. Well, I
mean everything, everything has a certain level of resistance. Yeah,
(26:58):
but if you're an official resistor, that means current moves,
it just doesn't move like as fast as it might
in metal, or not at all in wood. Yeah, or
glass is another good resistor insulator UM, and so so
so is rubber. But even something is like conductive is
copper wire has a certain amount of resistance. And again
(27:20):
that water flowing analogy comes into place like if you
pump like some water really really hard to try to
get a lot of water through a very small pipe,
it's still not going to come out very high, very
fast because you're trying to force too much water through
that that little pipe. So in the exact same way
(27:42):
a thin wire where you're trying to push a lot
of amps through and a lot of bolts through, Uh,
it's going to resist. And when you when you have
resistance in an electrical circuit, you have UM what you
lose some of those electrons that are flowing in the
form of heat, which is produced by electrons bumping up
against other atoms that aren't sharing their their electrons UM.
(28:05):
And that's the result of friction and resistance is measured
in Ohm's h M. Should we talk about circuits, Yeah,
we were there. I think so all this is well
and good. That's uh. You know, you can supply power
and we'll talk about this more in detail to two
homes from a power plant, UM. But you can also
(28:27):
have a little battery supplying that electrical energy to a iPhone,
let's say. And in that case, you need something called
a circuit, which is basically just a closed loop that
allows the electrons to travel. And in most electronics it's
like like you said, like copper wire maybe, and it
(28:48):
travels from you know, there's a switch that turns it
on and off um, which is why a circuit is
called a circuit breaker. Like if you break that circuit
by turning and switch off, or if the wire like
snaps or something, it's gonna no more electrons are gonna
be flowing, right, because there's the and the reason they're
not gonna be flowing any longer is because the positive
(29:10):
pole and the negative poll from that circuit are no
longer connected. Another way to look at voltage is that
it is the difference between uh electrons on one side
and electrons on another side of a circuit. And remember
we talked about nature always wanting balance. Electrons flow from
negative to positive rights, and as they flow, the reason
(29:35):
they're flowing. The whole reason they're moving at all is
because there are not as many electrons on the positive
side as there are on the negative side, so they
want to leave the negative side to go achieve balance
on the positive side and ultimately make whatever circuit it's
traveling neutral. You stick something in that circuit and as
as electrons are moving from the negative side to the
(29:57):
positive side. Because again electricity is just the flow of electrons,
you can convert that movement into productive work. Yeah, mechanical energy, right,
And anything you attach onto a circuit to exploit that
flow of electrons for work is called the load. Yeah.
It could be a lightbulb or you know whatever. Whatever
(30:18):
mechanical energy you're trying to create is your load. And
there's all sorts of things you can do by attaching
a load to a circuit, like a light bulb. UM.
A light bulb basically uses uh that electricity flow to
um flow into a resistant filament very thin wire that
(30:38):
purposely resists that flow of electricity, generating heat and then
turn heating up to produce light. That's how a light
bulb works. You can also recharge batteries, which go in
and force electrons back into the negative position so that
the batteries recharge and those electrons are ready to flow
again once you connect the circuit. UM. There is also
(31:00):
appliances that use resistors to produce heat, like a hair
dryer or a toaster. There's all sorts of stuff you
you can do to connect into the circuit, but it's
all the same whether it's a battery or a toaster
or a whole house, if you want to look at
it that way, it's you're plugging a load onto an
electrical circuit and exploiting the flow of electrons. Yeah, and
(31:24):
I kind of misspoke a minute ago when I said
it's creating the mechanical energy. You need a motor to
actually do that. So if you have an electric drill,
that's great that you have electrons flowing, but it's not
going to turn anything unless you have that motor. And
electric motor is basically just a cylinder, uh, stuffed with
magnets around the edge. And if you've ever used an
(31:44):
electric drill and you fire it up, when you look
and seeing the vents, you can actually see sparks. It's
pretty cool. It's very cool. It's like those little guns
you used to get at the circus when you're yeah, god,
I love those. Um. So it's packed with those magnets
around the edge, and in the middle you've got your core,
which is, you know, like an iron wire and uh,
it's wrapped around you know, the coppers wrapped around the edges.
(32:08):
So electricity flows to that core, creates magnetism, and then
that pushes against the outer cylinder and makes that motor
spin around. And then that's where you get your mechanical energy, right,
and uh, an electric motor is probably the best example
of how you're converting um energy from one form to
another and then reconverting it because an electric motor is
(32:31):
basically a generator in reverse. Yeah, And so you use
that mechanical energy the spinning of the turbine down the line,
and convert it in your electric drill back into mechanical
energy to spin spin the drill. And in between is
that flow of electrons that's causing the whole thing, or
that's carrying that energy from point A to point b
core puscles. There's one other there's one other thing. Um
(32:54):
if you look at a plug that you're plugging an
appliance into, because again you're just attaching a load to
that flow of electrons and diverting it through your appliance
and then it goes back on its merry way. Right.
If you look at a plug, sometimes you'll see three
prongs and the third prong, the one on the bottom
seems different from the other ones. It's round, and that
(33:16):
is actually a grounding wire. Very important, very very important,
because as awesome as we've gotten with producing and directing electricity,
we can't control the amount of electrons that flow through
an outlet to down to a single electron, and so
there's such a thing as leakage of electrons, which is crazy.
(33:38):
And there's also um electrical build up that can happen
where if you're not using all of the um amps
in through an appliance, the residual amps can build up
and they charge the appliance and again, as with static electricity,
charges just sitting there waiting to be neutralized, sometimes through you,
(34:00):
which can make it very dangerous. To prevent this, they
have they connect the appliance through either that third prong
in a plug or through an actual grounding wire to
a copper wire that's driven into the ground. And that's
where the word comes from ground. You're actually transferring that
(34:20):
residual um electric electric energy to the ground, which is
basically an infinite reservoir for charge of dispersal to earth. Yeah,
So like when you look at a power line and
you see that bare wire coming down from the parallel
line and driven into the ground by a steak that
is the ground, and it goes down like six or
(34:42):
ten feet. Or if you look at every house, you're
gonna see near the meter, the electrical meter, you're gonna
see a probably a copper rod driven into the ground,
and that's your house is ground. Exactly the same thing
with a lightning rod. It's a ground for your entire house,
so that the lightning doesn't go through your how as
it goes through the lightning rod. And the point of
(35:02):
all of those is that the earth is it can
take it. Go ahead and give it as many electrical
shocks as you want. It's gonna be fine, so we think.
And it's a very good it's very good at just
dispersing those charges. So that's what grounding comes from. Very
important stuff. Yeah, and uh, we mentioned transformers earlier. Um
(35:22):
power plants create massive amounts of electricity and you can't
just shoot that down a power line and straight into
a house because it will blow up everything in your
in your home immediately. But they do need that kind
of juice in order to transfer like hundreds of miles
away from the power plant. You know, if you don't
(35:42):
live close, it's still got to get to you. So
the way they do that as new transformers, they transmit
the power with a lot of voltage, so more force,
less amperage, less resistance, less resistance, which means you lose less.
And then once it you know, they stop it down
along the way and by the time it gets your home,
it's transformed down to here in the United States and
(36:04):
twenty volts more elsewhere. Nights nice and safe, right, And
then you just plug your appliance into it and all
of a sudden that electrical energy transmits to your coaster.
Strudal being warmed, your hot pocket with tainted meats. That yeah,
(36:24):
remember that whole horsemade thing with Ikea the last couple
of years. It wasn't just Ikea, but they were definitely
called out, maybe most strongly for I think the hot
pockets too. They called it unsound meat, which is just
a word that sounds weird in front of meat. Unsound
is not you don't want to go near it, unsound, unclean,
It's biblical, all right. So now I think we even
(36:44):
though we've covered it in the Tesla podcast, we do
need to go over a C D C a little
bit like go listen to that podcast. That's a great one.
Best Australian band of all time. They were good. Yeah, yeah,
are good, David? Are they still around? Yeah? Man, David
Bowie played a pretty mean Tesla. No, I'm not telling
my Teslam on my A C d C okay. Uh
(37:07):
was all right? And they're not around. That's how I
was really confused. I was more confused about that than
I was by any aspect of electricity. I'm like, yeah, man,
of course they're around anyone in the Australian Uh yeah, No,
A C DC is great and they're still around. Huh
yeah there. I think you're putting an album together right now.
Given for them, I'll bet it sounds exactly like all
(37:27):
the rest. It's still rocks blues based rock. Uh in
valure velvet. Yes. So there was a battle being waged
between Tesla and Edison, and Tesla was all about the
A C current alternating current. Edison, as we know, said no, no, no,
that's far too dangerous and I'll prove this to you
by electrocuting animals and dogs and cats and even an
(37:50):
elephant named topsy and Um. And he was alleged to
have helped botch the first electrocution by electric chair by
a state Oh yeah, um. I don't remember the details
of that, but it's definitely in our our episode on
Exploded the guy. Yeah, he was a real jerk, remember, um.
And I think we remember I remember talking about there
(38:11):
should be a movie too about that that battle. Yeah.
I can't believe there's not. It sounds super nerdy, but
it would actually be interesting to go over. Well these
things degreed. So batteries these days use direct current power
DC power, and that means the positive and negative terminals
are always positive and negative, and it always electricity always
(38:32):
flows in the same direction from negative depositives. It does
not alternate. Yeah, just think about it this way. Uh,
negative and electrons negative. So in any terminal, that's where
all the negative charges vibes, and then positive is where
the electrons want to be because they're seeking to balance
it out and create neutral so that there's no pole
(38:53):
good vibes, yeah, or the very least so so vibes,
but not negative no. Um. And then you have alternating
current or a C, which means the current reverses sixty
times per second here in the US fifty times per second.
In Europe, So it's just reversing back and forth, alternating
(39:14):
that current. And uh, I guess, so who went out
in the end Tesla um on a large scale. Well, yeah,
I mean that's does Edison has his batteries. I guess
he could throw it up, which are pretty important too.
But yeah, I think we kind of came out in
the same way on that episode. They both kind of won. Yeah,
(39:37):
but Tesla was the cooler dude. Although Tesla died penniless
in New York in the nineteen forties and Edison died
of rich fat guy, he died of consumption and gout.
No has been Franklin. I guess we can finish with um.
If you get your power bill and you're amazed and
(39:57):
you wonder how they calculate this stuff, it's pretty easy.
Like we said here in the US, we deliver electricity
into your home at a hundred and twenty volts, So
you gotta remember that one too. It's important. Our article
uses a space heater as an example, which I think
is pretty good. You plug in that space heater. Let's
say it's the only thing going in your house, which
is not realistic, but go with me. You plug in
(40:19):
the space heater and it comes out to ten amps.
So you multiply that ten times undred and twenty because
that's your voltage, and you have got twelve hundred watts
of heat or one point to kill a watts. Yes,
because that's how the power company is going to measure it,
because they deal in big chunks. And if you leave
(40:41):
that heater on for an hour, you just used one
point to kill a watt hours, which is how you're build. Yeah,
and if they charge you a dime per kilo hot hour,
it's gonna cost you twelve cents an hour to run
that space heater. Right, Pretty simple and neat. And that's
why when you go to buy an appliance you should
look at that little tag that says how many kill
a wat hours you're gonna be burning? That's right, The
(41:02):
lower the better. So electricity, Huh, you got anything else? No,
don't play around with it, No, don't. Uh. Yes. I
always wear rubber sold shoes because rubber is an insulator.
It is why because it hangs on to its electrons,
the atoms that make up rubber. It's just that simple. Uh.
(41:22):
If you want to know more about electricity, you can
type that word in the search part how stuff works
dot Com. You can also go on all sorts of
kids science sites and find out more about it too.
And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this rare birthday shout out. Hey, guys,
my name is Pearl, and I just want to tell
(41:43):
you how much a fan I am of your show.
I was introduced to the podcast by my best friend Molly.
We've been best friends for twelve years, and many of
our conversations begin by commenting on the podcast. For example,
we could not stop laughing at your nineteen twenties voice.
Towards the end the Underground Tunnels episode, we laughed over
and over that I think she's talking about this one
(42:05):
see Electricity, Tesla Edison killing animals. All right, that was
for you, Molly and Pearl. Whenever we're in the car together,
we find a podcast of yours to listen to so
we can enjoy it together. I was wondering if you
could help her out. Molly's twenty six birthday is April ninth,
and I think it would be totally awesome birthday gift
(42:25):
if you would send her a shout out during listener
mail I would be forever in your debt. Thanks for
doing the podcast. I'm a middle school teacher who always
listens during my prep periods and so happy birthday, Molly,
Happy twenty six. That should be close. Yeah, happy birthday
to April Night. That was very nice of us, and
thank you Pearl Webb in Chicago. And your friendship means
(42:47):
a lot to us. Yeah, you know, your friendship with
one another. Yeah, and then conversely through us all together
in their car. Yeah. Well, if you want to get
some sort of shout out sometimes Chuck uh Danes too,
he's very nice. Um. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
(43:09):
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot
com and as I always, join us at our home
on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
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