WEBVTT - How does electricity work? 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:13.400 Hey, Katie, I'm thinking of starting a magazine all about electricity. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:14.520 What are you gonna call it? 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:17.000 I was thinking Current Events. 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.759 Sounds like it should be free of charge. 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:23.520 But it's gonna be filled with all sorts of shocking news. 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:25.640 Gonna make my hair stand on end. 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:28.000 Only if the writers find their creative spark. 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.080 It's probably gonna get a lot of ads from volts Wagon. 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.640 I'm not gonna be resisting their money, that's for sure. 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:38.000 Who put you in charge? 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:39.760 I'm gonna stay neutral on that question. 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:44.160 I feel like you have an advantage when it comes 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:46.360 to electricity puns over me. 0:00:46.720 --> 0:01:06.319 The physics PhD is good for something. Finally, Hi, I'm Daniel. 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:09.440 I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.560 and I'm all here for the shocking puns. 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:16.240 I am Katie Golden. I am the host of a 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:20.720 podcast called Creature Feature all about animals, and I do 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:23.080 not know what is going on here. 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:28.760 And welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jjorge explain the 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:33.360 universe in which we pun our way into understanding everything 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:35.920 that's out there in the universe, the biggest things, the 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.720 smallest things, the squishiest things, the positive things, the negative 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:43.600 things and everything in between. We think the universe, as 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:48.120 beautiful and complicated and mysterious as it is, deserves to 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:50.880 be understood and deserves to be explained to you. 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:56.000 I am excited to learn more about electricity because all 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:58.880 I know is there is a certain type of blanket 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:03.360 that makes my hair stand on end. And my dog 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:05.800 loves this blanket because it's warm, but it also makes 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.840 her hair stand on end. And I need your top 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:13.600 physicists to figure out why this blanket is causing this 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:14.160 to happen. 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:16.680 You need me to explain to you why your dog 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:20.320 loves you when you're using an electric blanket, or whether 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:22.679 it loves you or the blanket. You really want to 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:23.200 get into that. 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:26.920 Uh yeah, maybe I don't want to know. No, but 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.280 this is like a microfiber blanket that just generates a 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.680 lot of static electricity. I feel like it should be 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:36.799 studied by like sern or bring your top scientists and 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:37.960 take a look at this blanket. 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:40.799 Oh, I see, it's not that your dog loves your 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.799 heated electric blanket. You seem to have a blanket which 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.519 violates the laws of physics and gathers up an incredible 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:47.880 amount of static electricity. 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:50.240 Something like that. I don't know if it's violating the 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:54.679 laws of physics or if it's just a superconductor. Maybe 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:55.720 we've found something. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:02:59.560 I hope you don't open a portal into another dimension 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:02.040 using your blanket and kill us all. 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.880 You can't tell me what to do, no. 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:11.359 But I can give you some advice. I don't think 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:13.920 that Katie's blanket is going to kill us all. But 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:16.959 sometimes it does seem like electricity is the closest thing 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:20.600 we have to magic. I mean, you can levitate things, 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:24.160 it can shock things, it creates incredible light shows from 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:27.080 the sky to the earth. It's incredible to me that 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:29.480 physics can explain it. That this is just part of 0:03:29.520 --> 0:03:33.320 the natural world sort of blurs the edge there between 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:35.640 things that should and can be explainable. 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:36.080 Yeah. 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:39.080 No, it is kind of like magic, right because we've 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.200 all kind of, I guess, gotten used to it in 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:44.440 day to day life. We just take it for granted. 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.880 But if you showed this, say to an ancient human, 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.240 all of the things that we have manipulated electricity to do, 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:55.360 they would essentially think that we're wizards. Depending on the 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.640 era you're in, they would burn you or think you're 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.080 a god and I mean it really you only have 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:04.320 to look at like the sky right when there's like 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:07.520 a big thunderstorm to see how I mean, it looks 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:12.440 so mystical and so impressive that it can be so 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.400 impressively destructive. But the only time you see it is 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.640 when it's in that kind of like plasma form. But 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:24.600 otherwise you can't really see electricity unless it's being used 0:04:24.640 --> 0:04:26.760 by something or funneled in some way. 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:29.760 Yeah, it's fascinating because it is a part of our 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.800 natural world, but it's not a common experience, as you say, 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.000 like you go about your everyday life and mostly it's 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.000 just like walking around on the surface of the earth 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:40.279 and feeling gravity and trying to stay warm and fed 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:42.640 in this kind of stuff. Your everyday life, you don't 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.919 tap into these awesome powers. It's that incredible power of 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:50.040 electricity that makes it so almost mystical, because when you 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:52.679 do crack it open, you do get hit by lightning, 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:55.040 or when you can tap into it to like levitate 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:58.160 a train or whatever, it does seem awesome. It seems 0:04:58.240 --> 0:05:00.560 like a power that maybe you should be beyond what 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.320 humans can tap into. And yet it's not even the 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.640 strongest force in the universe. So I love that these 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.360 things that sometimes seem magical to our ancient ancestors can 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.240 actually come across the line into the category of natural 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:19.360 into something we can explain using mathematics and physics and 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:20.760 learn how to manipulate. 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:23.960 And it's really interesting the history of us trying to 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:27.640 understand electricity, right, Like it's one of these things that 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.240 sure now we have a much more sophisticated view of it, 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.280 but that there are some experiments into electricity that were 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.760 quite early, and even though they were crude, we were 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.080 starting to learn how to actually store it, like long 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:45.800 before we had modern things like computers or even light 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:47.360 bulbs that could be powered by it. 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.000 Yeah, and I feel like it's a real triumph for reductionism. 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:53.880 It's an amazing success for the whole idea that you 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.920 can explain everything we see in the world in terms 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.599 of the microscopic story, like how do you understand what 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.080 lightning is? How do you understand why electric eels shock you? 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:06.840 How do you understand what magnets are? It turns out 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:09.799 it's all explained by the tiny particles and their properties 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.479 and what they're doing, and everything in our world in 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:14.880 the end bubbles up from the properties of those particles 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.640 and how those particles interact and dance together to make 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.839 our world. So if you see something weird and mysterious 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.800 and potentially mystical in the end, you can't explain it. 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.760 If you can zoom down to the tiny microscopic level 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:30.520 and see what's going on down there, that's where the 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:31.320 answers are. 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:35.160 Yeah, And I mean it's so interesting because even though 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:40.559 electricity is by science well understood, I think for most 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:45.480 of us myself definitely included, our understanding of how it 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:49.279 actually works is pretty limited. I'm like, I plug in 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:54.159 this cord to the wall, and things flow in from 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:59.839 the wall and make my Nintendo go make good games. 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.080 Exactly, and keep your rice cooker going. And even though 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:06.520 we can understand a lot of electricity in terms of 0:07:06.600 --> 0:07:09.960 tiny particles, there are a lot of deep fundamental questions 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.720 remaining about those particles, why they have electric charge, and 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.680 what that even means. And so today on the podcast, 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:26.400 we're going to be tackling the question how does electricity work? Like, 0:07:26.480 --> 0:07:30.240 what is electricity anyway? What's going on down there at 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.680 the tiny particle level? How do electrons and protons and 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.920 all those other charged particles make your rice cooker work, 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:41.000 and static electricity and electric eels and lightning and alternating 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:43.560 currents and electric cars. How does all that bubble up 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:45.520 from the tiny particles and their properties. 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.760 I'm excited to learn this because most of my knowledge 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.040 is that I should not stick a fork into a 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:57.560 toaster because something bad happens, it will be. 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.560 The last thing you ever do. So, yes, not stick 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:02.480 a fork into a toaster. If you learn nothing else 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.680 from this episode, remember that toasters are not friendly to forks. 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.120 There's worse ways to go out than being excited for 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:13.160 nice toast. But I won't do that, and neither should 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:14.600 you be careful around toasters. 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:16.800 You don't even get the toast in that scenario. That's 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.000 the worst part. You die toastless. 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:21.080 Yeah, but you don't know that. You don't know that 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:22.040 you're dead. 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.560 That's true of everywhere you go out, though it's true. 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:28.040 Wouldn't you rather die with the taste of recently enjoyed 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:28.840 toast in your mouth? 0:08:29.000 --> 0:08:32.600 I would rather live with the recently enjoyable taste of 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:37.480 toast in my mouth, Daniel, I'll toast that all right. 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:40.160 So we were curious if people out there knew how 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:43.800 electricity worked, and had an idea of how the particles 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.720 and their charges come together to make the phenomenon we 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:50.319 call electricity. So I went out there to ask our 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.560 team of volunteers, who are so generous with their time 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:56.600 and ideas about all these crazy physics topics. If you 0:08:56.600 --> 0:09:00.120 would like to participate in this audience answer segment of THEO, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:02.959 please don't be shy. Write to me two questions at 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:05.880 Daniel Ianhorge dot com and I will hook you up. 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:08.640 So think about it for a minute. Do you know 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:13.760 how electricity actually works? Here's what people had to say. 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:17.880 I do not know, but we did build a fence 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:23.040 for the chickens that was electric, didn't we, Sophie, Yeah, yeah, 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.560 and then I shocked myself with it by accident after 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:29.120 I made it. So I don't know how electricity works, 0:09:29.200 --> 0:09:31.920 but I do know that it works. 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:35.960 I think electricity works by sending a current that's missing 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:40.480 one of its key components, like an electrical imbalance, through 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.480 a conductive means that will make it think that it's 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:45.200 going to ground. 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:49.320 I really enjoy when we humans get hoisted by our 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:53.280 own petard. We create an electric fence, you know, for 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:56.839 chickens and then we get shocked by our an electric fence. 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.800 I wonder if the chickens if they have any awareness 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:02.760 of this, and if they find it really funny. 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:05.640 Maybe the chickens manipulated him into building a fence to 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:08.400 keep him out because he's like always bothering them, and 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.040 they're just like, man, we just need some time to ourselves. 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.680 I like the idea of super intelligence manipulative chickens. 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:22.640 And when they see him getting shocked, they're like, look, band, 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:23.480 respect the fence. 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.440 I've seen chicken run. I know how these things work. 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:32.960 Yeah, exactly. So you were right when you said that 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.760 electricity is an ancient concept. It's something we've known about 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:41.600 since antiquity. And we haven't understood electricity in a microscopic picture, 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:45.240 of course, until very very recently. But electricity is something 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:49.400 humans have been experiencing at least since we've been humans, 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:52.000 since there's like a cultural memory we can draw on. 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:57.480 Since we first rubbed our prehistoric socks against a prehistoric mammoth, 0:10:57.800 --> 0:10:59.920 for rug, we have known. 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:05.520 Yeah, there's writing in like ancient Greek texts about electric fish. 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.280 Of course, about lightning, you know, there's gods of lightning 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.840 and this kind of stuff. But also even the ancient 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:12.800 Greeks knew that if you rubbed an amber rod with 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.480 a fur, you could get static electricity. This is not 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:20.160 something you need complicated devices for particle accelerators or anything. 0:11:20.559 --> 0:11:24.160 You can like summon the quantum microscopic nature of the 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.080 universe just using a piece of amber and a cloth. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:28.160 It's kind of incredible. 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:30.640 I mean, what is it about amber that makes it 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.800 particularly good at generating electricity? Are we going to talk 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.480 about that later. That's interesting to me that amber has 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.400 that versus just say, if you used I don't know, 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:41.240 soapstone or a rock. 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.280 Yeah, we're going to talk about static electricity in a minute. 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:46.520 And amber is just sort of historically like one of 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.160 the first things that humans discovered could do this. But 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.520 a lot of stuff can do it. Glass rods can 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:53.959 do it, wax can do it. It just depends a 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:56.640 little bit on the electronic structure of the atoms at 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.439 the surface. But the cool thing about amber is that 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:04.120 it's influenced what we call electricity. Oh interesting because the 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:08.600 word electron actually comes from the Greek word for amber. Like, 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:11.480 the Greeks knew that you could use amber to create 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.200 static electricity, and then in the sixteen hundreds, an English 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:19.439 scientist wrote a book calling this phenomenon electricus, which means 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:24.000 like of amber from the Greek word for amber. So electron, 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.800 the word in Greek actually means amber. So all this 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.080 time we're talking about electricity, Greek people are hearing like 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:31.880 resonances with the word amber. 0:12:32.640 --> 0:12:36.200 That's so interesting. I feel like puns and other languages 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:40.360 must be really different, like the electrical puns if your 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:42.480 English is a second language, are not going to make 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:43.960 any sense in our podcast. 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.760 But imagine if you're walking around and people are talking 0:12:47.800 --> 0:12:52.079 about like tree sapicity, right, it must be really strange 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.640 to hear this remnant of the ancient world in this word. 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:00.120 Yeah, when words do not originate from our language, it's 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.600 hard to kind of connect the meaning that we have 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:05.760 ascribed to them now with what they used to mean. 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:08.839 But it's that's so interesting that all the way back 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.000 in ancient Greece there was this sort of awareness of 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:15.960 how to generate static electricity, and then all the way 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.400 until now we still use that build upon the knowledge. 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:22.600 I love these ancient clues about the quantum nature of 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:24.880 the world. You know, the world that we live in 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:29.240 is mostly like classical things move slowly. It's mostly just 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.160 defined by gravity. You can ignore the fact that things 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:34.679 are actually built out of tiny quantum objects because when 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:36.800 you put ten to the thirty of them together, they 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:38.720 act in a different way. They act in this weird 0:13:38.920 --> 0:13:42.600 classical way where things move smoothly with paths and are 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.720 predictable and had trajectories and stuff. But we know that 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.200 deep down the world actually is quantum, and this is 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.439 fundamental mystery in physics about how you go from the 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:53.920 quantum nature of the world to the classical world this 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:57.560 connection between them. But electricity is awesome because it's like 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:00.720 a crack. It shows you, like directly that the world 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.000 has this other deep nature in it which is really different, 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.160 and it gives you this glimpse into the incredible power 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:10.520 of these particles. It's like this clear channel down to 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.520 the microscopic nature of the universe to show you that 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:15.760 something crazy is going on down there. 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.560 You mentioned earlier Zeus, like the god of thunder in 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:23.360 the Greek and Roman pantheon, and then there's also Thor, 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:26.000 who's like, you know, another god of thunder, And I 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:29.880 think that's really interesting that these sort of ancient cultures 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.520 maybe like gods and stuff, was a way for them 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.640 to start to describe how they are perceiving these kind 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:42.720 of random and capricious things happening, like a lightning storm 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.280 or this electricity that is disobeying sort of the rules 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:51.440 that we understand as humans in terms of simple physics 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:55.360 of throwing a rock or you know, jumping up and down, 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.440 and so yeah, I wonder if, like some of the 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:02.360 theology that that developed at this time was a way 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:07.640 to start to try to explain when we started to 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:12.120 see more evidence of the quantum nature of the universe, 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:15.680 more randomness, things that are harder to explain or that 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:17.680 you can't see with the naked eye. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.400 And I think it's interesting it sort of tracks humanity's 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:26.160 attempt to understand the world, starting with like mythological explanations 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:28.560 of saying, we don't understand this, therefore it must be 0:15:28.640 --> 0:15:32.520 some entity, something with intention that's making these decisions. It 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:36.560 can't just be explained with some mechanistic understanding. And then 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:39.440 in the sixteen hundreds and the seventeen hundreds, people doing 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.720 more experiments, people developing an understanding of it bit by bit, 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:46.040 and you know, electricity spans so many different kinds of 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:50.920 phenomena from static electricity to lightning to magnetism. All this 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:54.320 kind of stuff was investigated independently and then in the 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:57.480 seventeen hundreds researched by all sorts of people fair Day, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.320 including Ben Franklin, all this kind of stuff to a 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:05.120 unified theory by James Clerk Maxwell of electromagnetism. How all 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:09.320 of these ideas are actually just reflections of one single concept, 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:14.160 this electromagnetic force, which can explain everything we see. Really 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:19.479 an incredible moment of unification of understanding, not just mechanistic explanation, 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.920 like oh, there's not people in the sky making these decisions, 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:26.320 we can actually predict it with mathematics, but bringing together 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:30.360 so many different concepts into one harmonious idea. It's like 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.440 really a triumph for the whole idea that physics can 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:35.040 simplify the universe. 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.160 It's like that whole a bunch of blind men trying 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.280 to describe an elephant, but the elephant is made out 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:44.840 of electricity, and it's a bunch of scientists all over 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.280 the world. That's yeah, that's really interesting how we have 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.880 it seems like with a lot of these discoveries in 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.680 physics and other sciences, you have these waves of parallel 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:00.240 discoveries or complementary discoveries that all kind of happen in 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:04.000 these bursts as we start to build on old knowledge 0:17:04.040 --> 0:17:08.879 and our technology and scientific abilities improve. It's not just 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:12.879 one guy, right, Like Ben Franklin did not discover electricity, 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:19.119 Thomas Edison did not make electricity usable. They certainly contributed 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.959 to it, but it's a bunch of different scientists and 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:26.400 researchers and people who kind of like in these waves 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:29.639 of like, oh, now we have the technology to be 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:34.159 able to observe or study this. Now a bunch of 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.240 people are contributing to the research and coming up with 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:38.400 ideas at the same time. 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:40.399 And it seems like a burst, but it's only a 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.000 burst on historical time scales, Like you look back and 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:47.360 there's like decades between experiments and discoveries. So that's sort 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.120 of frustrating to realize, like, Wow, they could have figured 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:50.639 this stuff out much sooner. 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:52.080 Only I had cell phones. 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.440 We could have had iPhones like one hundred years earlier. 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.720 If people had been on top of this stuff. 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.160 We had Twitter back then, it would have either really 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:03.199 helped or doomed society, I don't know. 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:07.199 But then it's the late eighteen hundreds. After Maxwell has 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:11.120 understood what electromagnetism is, we have an idea of a charge. 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:13.959 JJ Thompson was the first person to figure out like 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.840 the beginning of the microscopic story of how this actually worked, 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.240 like what charge was and how it moved. When he 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:23.800 discovered the electron, he was studying cathode rays and playing 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.720 around with these tubes and putting electric fields and magnetic 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:29.000 fields near them and seeing how they bend the rays. 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:32.080 We have a whole podcast on the discovery of the electron, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.320 and the key thing that he discovered was that the 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.760 mass and the charge were linked. If you were going 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:40.200 to bend this ray, there was some stuff to it, 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.440 and the charge and the stuff couldn't be separated. The 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.359 charge was attached to the stuff. This is like the 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:49.159 beginning of the modern concept of what a particle is. 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:52.160 That there was some tiny little bit that had these 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:54.400 labels and you couldn't pull those labels apart. They were 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.679 like deeply linked together mass and charge. He called this 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:02.320 thing actually a corpus crust, and there was only later 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:04.480 renamed into an electron. 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.840 I'm glad, so we should all be that could have 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:08.520 been disgusting. 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:12.560 Otherwise we'd have like corpuscular engineers running the world. 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.040 It is interesting because like there was I know that 0:19:16.080 --> 0:19:18.920 throughout the history of science sort of the distinction between 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:24.160 the physical and the non physical got kind of confused 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:25.919 and modeled. Like it reminds you of sort of the 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.440 idea that the mind, right, our conscious experience is actually 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.879 connected to our physical brain. We didn't come out of 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:35.119 the gate knowing that, you know, we didn't know that 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:39.879 our brain was responsible for thoughts and feelings for a 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.399 long time. So that that sounds kind of similar to 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:47.680 this where it's like discovering that electrical charge has sort 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:49.480 of a physical manifestation. 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.000 Yeah, and that's not something that we still really understand. 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:55.240 We'd like kicked the can down the road a long 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.960 way as we're saying, what are these electrical effects? Where 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:00.760 does charge come from? Oh, it's attached these things we 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.280 call particles, we can call them electrons. We can say 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.760 they have electric charge and they have mass and they 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.440 whizz around. And in the next segment of the podcast, 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:11.040 we'll talk about all the amazing electrical effects and how 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:13.920 they come out of electrons. But we still don't really 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:19.359 understand what is an electron, and what is electric charge? 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:21.840 Like we can say that it's there. We can say 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:25.240 electrons have this property electric charge, and we can say 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:27.400 that what that means, But really it just means they 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:29.600 push on each other or they pull on each other. 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.679 It's a way to explain the things that we see 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:36.280 by creating this label and putting it on electrons. We 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:39.200 don't know, like what charge is? Why do some particles 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:42.400 have it and other particles don't have it? Like doutrinos 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.720 have no charge at all, but quarks and electrons certainly do. 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:50.680 Why is charge conserved in the universe? Like you can 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.159 do all sorts of chemical and physical processes, but you 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.920 cannot increase or decrease the amount of charge. That tells 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:00.280 us that charge is something really important to the universe. 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.720 It's deeply embedded somehow in the nature of reality. But 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.240 like if you ask me what is electric charge? I 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:09.760 can just describe it. I can't define it or really 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:10.440 explain it. 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:13.679 Well, I think if you and I put our heads together, 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:18.639 you with your knowledge of particle physics, me you know, 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.560 being here, I think we can figure it out. And 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:25.320 so let's take a quick break and when we come back. 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:42.560 I'm sure we will have discovered the mysteries of electricity. 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:46.800 So we are back, Daniel. We had a good think. 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:52.760 Mostly you any closer to solving the mysteries of electricity? 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:55.440 No, I took a little nap and I was hoping 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.520 they're a lightning bolt of inspiration, but nothing came. But 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:01.399 I do feel feel better and I'm ready to dig 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:05.480 in to understanding electricity. I think that's amazing how science 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.359 works in stages. You know, like there's a huge mystery 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:10.200 and you can explain it in terms of something smaller, 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:12.359 and then you can focus on that thing smaller. Then 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:15.240 you explain that, which turns out to reveal a smaller 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.919 mystery and a smaller mystery, and in some ways you 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:20.440 are developing an understanding. In some ways you're just sort 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.399 of like recursively kicking it down the road. This answer 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:25.440