Electricity is all around us powering technology such as our cell phones, computers, lights, soldering irons, and air conditioners. It’s hard to escape it in our modern world. Even if you try to escape electricity, it’s still at work throughout nature, from the lightning in a thunderstorm to the synapses inside our body. But what exactly is electricity? This is a very complex question, and as you dig deeper and ask more questions, there really is not a definitive answer, only abstract representations of how electricity interacts with our surroundings.
Table of Contents
What is Electricity?
Electricity, a phenomenon linked with stationary or moving electric charges. Electric charge is a primary property of matter and is borne by primary particles. In electricity, the particle is related is the electron, which carries a charge designated, by convention, as negative. Thus, the several manifestations of electricity are the result of the accumulation or motion of numbers of electrons.
History Of Electricity
History Of Frictional Electricity
History Of Current Electricity
The Brief History Of Electricity
We are glad to take you through a brief history of electricity, covering the key events you need to know to fully appreciate the one commodity we can’t live without.
The Discovery By Benjamin Franklin
In 1752, Benjamin Franklin did his famous kite experiment that sparked the discovery of electricity. As a famous American scientist and one of America’s founding fathers, Franklin tied a key to a kite string during a thunderstorm and proved that static electricity and lightning were one and the same thing. Following this historic result, people were anxious to try to harness the power of electricity.
World’s First Current & Electric Motor By Faraday
In 1831, Michael Faraday realized that electric current could be made by passing a magnet through a copper wire. This astonishing discovery formed the bedrock of today’s electricity and how we generate it, through magnets and coils of copper wires in big power plants. Based on this principle, both the electric motor (where electricity is converted into motion) and the generator (where motion is converted into electricity) were born.
The Invention Of The Light Bulb
Thomas Alva Edison starts working on electricity and brought it to life. in 1879 the world’s first incandescent electric light bulb (the yellow warm light) that still today is being used. As a result of this amazing invention, the entire gas lighting industry was made obsolete and Edison began to create his own company to manufacture and distribute his light bulb invention.
World’s First Modern Power Grid
Samuel Insull found an opportunity in the early 1900s to bring together mass efficiencies in production and consumption. He gathers all the smaller generators and chose to generate electricity by bigger and more efficient generators manufactured by General Electric. As he began to grow his customer base, Samuel began to create new electricity pricing plans to meet the growing demands of his customers.
Shift To Alternative & Renewable Energy
Most of the generated electricity was done using fossil fuels, from coal to fuel oil. With these conventional methods of the generation of electricity came an increase in carbon footprint and the emission of greenhouse gases. The world starts to focus on renewable energy like wind power and hydropower. Both of which were in use since the 1900s but it was only in the early 1930s with the construction of the Hoover Dam when hydropower really took flight and in the 1950s for wind power, once the first utility-grid attached wind turbine became a reality.
Tesla Motors
Tesla is also beginning to make electricity storage possible and cost-effective for the average family home. For their Powerwall series, families can store electricity and power from the grid that can be used later during power outages to help keep the lights, the air conditioner running, and the fridge cool.
Take Tesla, for example, the company has revolutionized the way we drive by inventing their electric car series which boasts long travel distances, a smooth and quiet ride as well as free recharge at any one of their charging stations.
How Electricity Forms?
Atoms are small particles and put simply, they are the elementary building blocks of everything around us, whether it is our chairs, desks, or even our own body. Atoms are made up of even smaller particles, called protons, electrons, and neutrons. When electrical and magnetic forces move electrons from one atom to another atom, an electrical current is formed.
How It Produce?
At first, to generate electricity, you will require a fuel source, such as coal, gas, hydropower, or wind. In Australia, most of the electricity supply is generated from traditional fuels, such as coal and natural gas, with around 14% coming from renewable energy sources. Regardless of the chosen fuel, most generators operate on the same principle: turn a turbine so that it can turn magnets surrounded by copper wire, to get the flow of electrons across atoms, that is, in turn, generates electricity. Coal and gas work in the same ways; they are both burned to heat water, which creates steam and turns the turbine.
Renewable energy sources like hydropower and wind operate slightly differently, with the water or the wind being used to turn the turbine and generate the electricity. Solar photovoltaic panels take various approaches again: they generate electrical power by converting solar radiation into electricity using semiconductors.
How Electricity Works?
Electricity is a form of energy caused by those, negatively charged particles known as electrons. When electricity builds up in one place, scientists named it static electricity. When it moves from one place to another place, it’s called current electricity. Electric currents power the electronic devices we’ve come to depend on. To form an electric current, electrons must flow along a closed path known as a circuit.
More about Electrical Circuit
Electrical Transmission
Electrical transmission is the process of delivering generated electricity – normally over long distances – to the distribution grid located in populated areas. An important part of this process includes transformers which are used to increase voltage levels to make long-distance transmission possible The electrical transmission system combined with power plants, distribution systems, and sub-stations to form which is known as the electrical grid. The grid meets society’s electricity needs and is which gets the electrical power from its generation to its end-use.
Transmission Line
Transmission lines, such as those transport electricity from place to place. Normally, this electricity is alternating current so transformers(step-up) can increase the voltage. This increased voltage allows enough transmission for 500 kilometers or less. There are some losses that take place in the transmission line when electricity is transporting. Transmission lines lose power to resistance, which is heat produce by moving electric current.
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