Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, I'm thinking of starting a magazine all about electricity.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna call it?
Speaker 1: I was thinking Current Events.
Speaker 2: Sounds like it should be free of charge.
Speaker 1: But it's gonna be filled with all sorts of shocking news.
Speaker 2: Gonna make my hair stand on end.
Speaker 1: Only if the writers find their creative spark.
Speaker 2: It's probably gonna get a lot of ads from volts Wagon.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be resisting their money, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Who put you in charge?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay neutral on that question.
Speaker 2: I feel like you have an advantage when it comes
Speaker 2: to electricity puns over me.
Speaker 1: The physics PhD is good for something. Finally, Hi, I'm Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,
Speaker 1: and I'm all here for the shocking puns.
Speaker 2: I am Katie Golden. I am the host of a
Speaker 2: podcast called Creature Feature all about animals, and I do
Speaker 2: not know what is going on here.
Speaker 1: And welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jjorge explain the
Speaker 1: universe in which we pun our way into understanding everything
Speaker 1: that's out there in the universe, the biggest things, the
Speaker 1: smallest things, the squishiest things, the positive things, the negative
Speaker 1: things and everything in between. We think the universe, as
Speaker 1: beautiful and complicated and mysterious as it is, deserves to
Speaker 1: be understood and deserves to be explained to you.
Speaker 2: I am excited to learn more about electricity because all
Speaker 2: I know is there is a certain type of blanket
Speaker 2: that makes my hair stand on end. And my dog
Speaker 2: loves this blanket because it's warm, but it also makes
Speaker 2: her hair stand on end. And I need your top
Speaker 2: physicists to figure out why this blanket is causing this
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: You need me to explain to you why your dog
Speaker 1: loves you when you're using an electric blanket, or whether
Speaker 1: it loves you or the blanket. You really want to
Speaker 1: get into that.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, maybe I don't want to know. No, but
Speaker 2: this is like a microfiber blanket that just generates a
Speaker 2: lot of static electricity. I feel like it should be
Speaker 2: studied by like sern or bring your top scientists and
Speaker 2: take a look at this blanket.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, it's not that your dog loves your
Speaker 1: heated electric blanket. You seem to have a blanket which
Speaker 1: violates the laws of physics and gathers up an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of static electricity.
Speaker 2: Something like that. I don't know if it's violating the
Speaker 2: laws of physics or if it's just a superconductor. Maybe
Speaker 2: we've found something.
Speaker 1: I hope you don't open a portal into another dimension
Speaker 1: using your blanket and kill us all.
Speaker 2: You can't tell me what to do, no.
Speaker 1: But I can give you some advice. I don't think
Speaker 1: that Katie's blanket is going to kill us all. But
Speaker 1: sometimes it does seem like electricity is the closest thing
Speaker 1: we have to magic. I mean, you can levitate things,
Speaker 1: it can shock things, it creates incredible light shows from
Speaker 1: the sky to the earth. It's incredible to me that
Speaker 1: physics can explain it. That this is just part of
Speaker 1: the natural world sort of blurs the edge there between
Speaker 1: things that should and can be explainable.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, it is kind of like magic, right because we've
Speaker 2: all kind of, I guess, gotten used to it in
Speaker 2: day to day life. We just take it for granted.
Speaker 2: But if you showed this, say to an ancient human,
Speaker 2: all of the things that we have manipulated electricity to do,
Speaker 2: they would essentially think that we're wizards. Depending on the
Speaker 2: era you're in, they would burn you or think you're
Speaker 2: a god and I mean it really you only have
Speaker 2: to look at like the sky right when there's like
Speaker 2: a big thunderstorm to see how I mean, it looks
Speaker 2: so mystical and so impressive that it can be so
Speaker 2: impressively destructive. But the only time you see it is
Speaker 2: when it's in that kind of like plasma form. But
Speaker 2: otherwise you can't really see electricity unless it's being used
Speaker 2: by something or funneled in some way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating because it is a part of our
Speaker 1: natural world, but it's not a common experience, as you say,
Speaker 1: like you go about your everyday life and mostly it's
Speaker 1: just like walking around on the surface of the earth
Speaker 1: and feeling gravity and trying to stay warm and fed
Speaker 1: in this kind of stuff. Your everyday life, you don't
Speaker 1: tap into these awesome powers. It's that incredible power of
Speaker 1: electricity that makes it so almost mystical, because when you
Speaker 1: do crack it open, you do get hit by lightning,
Speaker 1: or when you can tap into it to like levitate
Speaker 1: a train or whatever, it does seem awesome. It seems
Speaker 1: like a power that maybe you should be beyond what
Speaker 1: humans can tap into. And yet it's not even the
Speaker 1: strongest force in the universe. So I love that these
Speaker 1: things that sometimes seem magical to our ancient ancestors can
Speaker 1: actually come across the line into the category of natural
Speaker 1: into something we can explain using mathematics and physics and
Speaker 1: learn how to manipulate.
Speaker 2: And it's really interesting the history of us trying to
Speaker 2: understand electricity, right, Like it's one of these things that
Speaker 2: sure now we have a much more sophisticated view of it,
Speaker 2: but that there are some experiments into electricity that were
Speaker 2: quite early, and even though they were crude, we were
Speaker 2: starting to learn how to actually store it, like long
Speaker 2: before we had modern things like computers or even light
Speaker 2: bulbs that could be powered by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like it's a real triumph for reductionism.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing success for the whole idea that you
Speaker 1: can explain everything we see in the world in terms
Speaker 1: of the microscopic story, like how do you understand what
Speaker 1: lightning is? How do you understand why electric eels shock you?
Speaker 1: How do you understand what magnets are? It turns out
Speaker 1: it's all explained by the tiny particles and their properties
Speaker 1: and what they're doing, and everything in our world in
Speaker 1: the end bubbles up from the properties of those particles
Speaker 1: and how those particles interact and dance together to make
Speaker 1: our world. So if you see something weird and mysterious
Speaker 1: and potentially mystical in the end, you can't explain it.
Speaker 1: If you can zoom down to the tiny microscopic level
Speaker 1: and see what's going on down there, that's where the
Speaker 1: answers are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean it's so interesting because even though
Speaker 2: electricity is by science well understood, I think for most
Speaker 2: of us myself definitely included, our understanding of how it
Speaker 2: actually works is pretty limited. I'm like, I plug in
Speaker 2: this cord to the wall, and things flow in from
Speaker 2: the wall and make my Nintendo go make good games.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and keep your rice cooker going. And even though
Speaker 1: we can understand a lot of electricity in terms of
Speaker 1: tiny particles, there are a lot of deep fundamental questions
Speaker 1: remaining about those particles, why they have electric charge, and
Speaker 1: what that even means. And so today on the podcast,
Speaker 1: we're going to be tackling the question how does electricity work? Like,
Speaker 1: what is electricity anyway? What's going on down there at
Speaker 1: the tiny particle level? How do electrons and protons and
Speaker 1: all those other charged particles make your rice cooker work,
Speaker 1: and static electricity and electric eels and lightning and alternating
Speaker 1: currents and electric cars. How does all that bubble up
Speaker 1: from the tiny particles and their properties.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to learn this because most of my knowledge
Speaker 2: is that I should not stick a fork into a
Speaker 2: toaster because something bad happens, it will be.
Speaker 1: The last thing you ever do. So, yes, not stick
Speaker 1: a fork into a toaster. If you learn nothing else
Speaker 1: from this episode, remember that toasters are not friendly to forks.
Speaker 2: There's worse ways to go out than being excited for
Speaker 2: nice toast. But I won't do that, and neither should
Speaker 2: you be careful around toasters.
Speaker 1: You don't even get the toast in that scenario. That's
Speaker 1: the worst part. You die toastless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you don't know that. You don't know that
Speaker 2: you're dead.
Speaker 1: That's true of everywhere you go out, though it's true.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you rather die with the taste of recently enjoyed
Speaker 1: toast in your mouth?
Speaker 2: I would rather live with the recently enjoyable taste of
Speaker 2: toast in my mouth, Daniel, I'll toast that all right.
Speaker 1: So we were curious if people out there knew how
Speaker 1: electricity worked, and had an idea of how the particles
Speaker 1: and their charges come together to make the phenomenon we
Speaker 1: call electricity. So I went out there to ask our
Speaker 1: team of volunteers, who are so generous with their time
Speaker 1: and ideas about all these crazy physics topics. If you
Speaker 1: would like to participate in this audience answer segment of THEO,
Speaker 1: please don't be shy. Write to me two questions at
Speaker 1: Daniel Ianhorge dot com and I will hook you up.
Speaker 1: So think about it for a minute. Do you know
Speaker 1: how electricity actually works? Here's what people had to say.
Speaker 3: I do not know, but we did build a fence
Speaker 3: for the chickens that was electric, didn't we, Sophie, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and then I shocked myself with it by accident after
Speaker 3: I made it. So I don't know how electricity works,
Speaker 3: but I do know that it works.
Speaker 4: I think electricity works by sending a current that's missing
Speaker 4: one of its key components, like an electrical imbalance, through
Speaker 4: a conductive means that will make it think that it's
Speaker 4: going to ground.
Speaker 2: I really enjoy when we humans get hoisted by our
Speaker 2: own petard. We create an electric fence, you know, for
Speaker 2: chickens and then we get shocked by our an electric fence.
Speaker 2: I wonder if the chickens if they have any awareness
Speaker 2: of this, and if they find it really funny.
Speaker 1: Maybe the chickens manipulated him into building a fence to
Speaker 1: keep him out because he's like always bothering them, and
Speaker 1: they're just like, man, we just need some time to ourselves.
Speaker 2: I like the idea of super intelligence manipulative chickens.
Speaker 1: And when they see him getting shocked, they're like, look, band,
Speaker 1: respect the fence.
Speaker 2: I've seen chicken run. I know how these things work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So you were right when you said that
Speaker 1: electricity is an ancient concept. It's something we've known about
Speaker 1: since antiquity. And we haven't understood electricity in a microscopic picture,
Speaker 1: of course, until very very recently. But electricity is something
Speaker 1: humans have been experiencing at least since we've been humans,
Speaker 1: since there's like a cultural memory we can draw on.
Speaker 2: Since we first rubbed our prehistoric socks against a prehistoric mammoth,
Speaker 2: for rug, we have known.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's writing in like ancient Greek texts about electric fish.
Speaker 1: Of course, about lightning, you know, there's gods of lightning
Speaker 1: and this kind of stuff. But also even the ancient
Speaker 1: Greeks knew that if you rubbed an amber rod with
Speaker 1: a fur, you could get static electricity. This is not
Speaker 1: something you need complicated devices for particle accelerators or anything.
Speaker 1: You can like summon the quantum microscopic nature of the
Speaker 1: universe just using a piece of amber and a cloth.
Speaker 1: It's kind of incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is it about amber that makes it
Speaker 2: particularly good at generating electricity? Are we going to talk
Speaker 2: about that later. That's interesting to me that amber has
Speaker 2: that versus just say, if you used I don't know,
Speaker 2: soapstone or a rock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to talk about static electricity in a minute.
Speaker 1: And amber is just sort of historically like one of
Speaker 1: the first things that humans discovered could do this. But
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff can do it. Glass rods can
Speaker 1: do it, wax can do it. It just depends a
Speaker 1: little bit on the electronic structure of the atoms at
Speaker 1: the surface. But the cool thing about amber is that
Speaker 1: it's influenced what we call electricity. Oh interesting because the
Speaker 1: word electron actually comes from the Greek word for amber. Like,
Speaker 1: the Greeks knew that you could use amber to create
Speaker 1: static electricity, and then in the sixteen hundreds, an English
Speaker 1: scientist wrote a book calling this phenomenon electricus, which means
Speaker 1: like of amber from the Greek word for amber. So electron,
Speaker 1: the word in Greek actually means amber. So all this
Speaker 1: time we're talking about electricity, Greek people are hearing like
Speaker 1: resonances with the word amber.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. I feel like puns and other languages
Speaker 2: must be really different, like the electrical puns if your
Speaker 2: English is a second language, are not going to make
Speaker 2: any sense in our podcast.
Speaker 1: But imagine if you're walking around and people are talking
Speaker 1: about like tree sapicity, right, it must be really strange
Speaker 1: to hear this remnant of the ancient world in this word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when words do not originate from our language, it's
Speaker 2: hard to kind of connect the meaning that we have
Speaker 2: ascribed to them now with what they used to mean.
Speaker 2: But it's that's so interesting that all the way back
Speaker 2: in ancient Greece there was this sort of awareness of
Speaker 2: how to generate static electricity, and then all the way
Speaker 2: until now we still use that build upon the knowledge.
Speaker 1: I love these ancient clues about the quantum nature of
Speaker 1: the world. You know, the world that we live in
Speaker 1: is mostly like classical things move slowly. It's mostly just
Speaker 1: defined by gravity. You can ignore the fact that things
Speaker 1: are actually built out of tiny quantum objects because when
Speaker 1: you put ten to the thirty of them together, they
Speaker 1: act in a different way. They act in this weird
Speaker 1: classical way where things move smoothly with paths and are
Speaker 1: predictable and had trajectories and stuff. But we know that
Speaker 1: deep down the world actually is quantum, and this is
Speaker 1: fundamental mystery in physics about how you go from the
Speaker 1: quantum nature of the world to the classical world this
Speaker 1: connection between them. But electricity is awesome because it's like
Speaker 1: a crack. It shows you, like directly that the world
Speaker 1: has this other deep nature in it which is really different,
Speaker 1: and it gives you this glimpse into the incredible power
Speaker 1: of these particles. It's like this clear channel down to
Speaker 1: the microscopic nature of the universe to show you that
Speaker 1: something crazy is going on down there.
Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier Zeus, like the god of thunder in
Speaker 2: the Greek and Roman pantheon, and then there's also Thor,
Speaker 2: who's like, you know, another god of thunder, And I
Speaker 2: think that's really interesting that these sort of ancient cultures
Speaker 2: maybe like gods and stuff, was a way for them
Speaker 2: to start to describe how they are perceiving these kind
Speaker 2: of random and capricious things happening, like a lightning storm
Speaker 2: or this electricity that is disobeying sort of the rules
Speaker 2: that we understand as humans in terms of simple physics
Speaker 2: of throwing a rock or you know, jumping up and down,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I wonder if, like some of the
Speaker 2: theology that that developed at this time was a way
Speaker 2: to start to try to explain when we started to
Speaker 2: see more evidence of the quantum nature of the universe,
Speaker 2: more randomness, things that are harder to explain or that
Speaker 2: you can't see with the naked eye.
Speaker 1: And I think it's interesting it sort of tracks humanity's
Speaker 1: attempt to understand the world, starting with like mythological explanations
Speaker 1: of saying, we don't understand this, therefore it must be
Speaker 1: some entity, something with intention that's making these decisions. It
Speaker 1: can't just be explained with some mechanistic understanding. And then
Speaker 1: in the sixteen hundreds and the seventeen hundreds, people doing
Speaker 1: more experiments, people developing an understanding of it bit by bit,
Speaker 1: and you know, electricity spans so many different kinds of
Speaker 1: phenomena from static electricity to lightning to magnetism. All this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff was investigated independently and then in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds researched by all sorts of people fair Day,
Speaker 1: including Ben Franklin, all this kind of stuff to a
Speaker 1: unified theory by James Clerk Maxwell of electromagnetism. How all
Speaker 1: of these ideas are actually just reflections of one single concept,
Speaker 1: this electromagnetic force, which can explain everything we see. Really
Speaker 1: an incredible moment of unification of understanding, not just mechanistic explanation,
Speaker 1: like oh, there's not people in the sky making these decisions,
Speaker 1: we can actually predict it with mathematics, but bringing together
Speaker 1: so many different concepts into one harmonious idea. It's like
Speaker 1: really a triumph for the whole idea that physics can
Speaker 1: simplify the universe.
Speaker 2: It's like that whole a bunch of blind men trying
Speaker 2: to describe an elephant, but the elephant is made out
Speaker 2: of electricity, and it's a bunch of scientists all over
Speaker 2: the world. That's yeah, that's really interesting how we have
Speaker 2: it seems like with a lot of these discoveries in
Speaker 2: physics and other sciences, you have these waves of parallel
Speaker 2: discoveries or complementary discoveries that all kind of happen in
Speaker 2: these bursts as we start to build on old knowledge
Speaker 2: and our technology and scientific abilities improve. It's not just
Speaker 2: one guy, right, Like Ben Franklin did not discover electricity,
Speaker 2: Thomas Edison did not make electricity usable. They certainly contributed
Speaker 2: to it, but it's a bunch of different scientists and
Speaker 2: researchers and people who kind of like in these waves
Speaker 2: of like, oh, now we have the technology to be
Speaker 2: able to observe or study this. Now a bunch of
Speaker 2: people are contributing to the research and coming up with
Speaker 2: ideas at the same time.
Speaker 1: And it seems like a burst, but it's only a
Speaker 1: burst on historical time scales, Like you look back and
Speaker 1: there's like decades between experiments and discoveries. So that's sort
Speaker 1: of frustrating to realize, like, Wow, they could have figured
Speaker 1: this stuff out much sooner.
Speaker 2: Only I had cell phones.
Speaker 1: We could have had iPhones like one hundred years earlier.
Speaker 1: If people had been on top of this stuff.
Speaker 2: We had Twitter back then, it would have either really
Speaker 2: helped or doomed society, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But then it's the late eighteen hundreds. After Maxwell has
Speaker 1: understood what electromagnetism is, we have an idea of a charge.
Speaker 1: JJ Thompson was the first person to figure out like
Speaker 1: the beginning of the microscopic story of how this actually worked,
Speaker 1: like what charge was and how it moved. When he
Speaker 1: discovered the electron, he was studying cathode rays and playing
Speaker 1: around with these tubes and putting electric fields and magnetic
Speaker 1: fields near them and seeing how they bend the rays.
Speaker 1: We have a whole podcast on the discovery of the electron,
Speaker 1: and the key thing that he discovered was that the
Speaker 1: mass and the charge were linked. If you were going
Speaker 1: to bend this ray, there was some stuff to it,
Speaker 1: and the charge and the stuff couldn't be separated. The
Speaker 1: charge was attached to the stuff. This is like the
Speaker 1: beginning of the modern concept of what a particle is.
Speaker 1: That there was some tiny little bit that had these
Speaker 1: labels and you couldn't pull those labels apart. They were
Speaker 1: like deeply linked together mass and charge. He called this
Speaker 1: thing actually a corpus crust, and there was only later
Speaker 1: renamed into an electron.
Speaker 2: I'm glad, so we should all be that could have
Speaker 2: been disgusting.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we'd have like corpuscular engineers running the world.
Speaker 2: It is interesting because like there was I know that
Speaker 2: throughout the history of science sort of the distinction between
Speaker 2: the physical and the non physical got kind of confused
Speaker 2: and modeled. Like it reminds you of sort of the
Speaker 2: idea that the mind, right, our conscious experience is actually
Speaker 2: connected to our physical brain. We didn't come out of
Speaker 2: the gate knowing that, you know, we didn't know that
Speaker 2: our brain was responsible for thoughts and feelings for a
Speaker 2: long time. So that that sounds kind of similar to
Speaker 2: this where it's like discovering that electrical charge has sort
Speaker 2: of a physical manifestation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's not something that we still really understand.
Speaker 1: We'd like kicked the can down the road a long
Speaker 1: way as we're saying, what are these electrical effects? Where
Speaker 1: does charge come from? Oh, it's attached these things we
Speaker 1: call particles, we can call them electrons. We can say
Speaker 1: they have electric charge and they have mass and they
Speaker 1: whizz around. And in the next segment of the podcast,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about all the amazing electrical effects and how
Speaker 1: they come out of electrons. But we still don't really
Speaker 1: understand what is an electron, and what is electric charge?
Speaker 1: Like we can say that it's there. We can say
Speaker 1: electrons have this property electric charge, and we can say
Speaker 1: that what that means, But really it just means they
Speaker 1: push on each other or they pull on each other.
Speaker 1: It's a way to explain the things that we see
Speaker 1: by creating this label and putting it on electrons. We
Speaker 1: don't know, like what charge is? Why do some particles
Speaker 1: have it and other particles don't have it? Like doutrinos
Speaker 1: have no charge at all, but quarks and electrons certainly do.
Speaker 1: Why is charge conserved in the universe? Like you can
Speaker 1: do all sorts of chemical and physical processes, but you
Speaker 1: cannot increase or decrease the amount of charge. That tells
Speaker 1: us that charge is something really important to the universe.
Speaker 1: It's deeply embedded somehow in the nature of reality. But
Speaker 1: like if you ask me what is electric charge? I
Speaker 1: can just describe it. I can't define it or really
Speaker 1: explain it.
Speaker 2: Well, I think if you and I put our heads together,
Speaker 2: you with your knowledge of particle physics, me you know,
Speaker 2: being here, I think we can figure it out. And
Speaker 2: so let's take a quick break and when we come back.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we will have discovered the mysteries of electricity.
Speaker 2: So we are back, Daniel. We had a good think.
Speaker 2: Mostly you any closer to solving the mysteries of electricity?
Speaker 1: No, I took a little nap and I was hoping
Speaker 1: they're a lightning bolt of inspiration, but nothing came. But
Speaker 1: I do feel feel better and I'm ready to dig
Speaker 1: in to understanding electricity. I think that's amazing how science
Speaker 1: works in stages. You know, like there's a huge mystery
Speaker 1: and you can explain it in terms of something smaller,
Speaker 1: and then you can focus on that thing smaller. Then
Speaker 1: you explain that, which turns out to reveal a smaller
Speaker 1: mystery and a smaller mystery, and in some ways you
Speaker 1: are developing an understanding. In some ways you're just sort
Speaker 1: of like recursively kicking it down the road. This answer
Speaker 1: depends on the next one, which depends on the next one,
Speaker 1: and we hope eventually there is a deepest layer.
Speaker 2: We're also using electricity to think about electricity because our
Speaker 2: brains use electric potential charges to have the firing of
Speaker 2: our neurons. When you take a nap to think about electricity,
Speaker 2: your brain is manipulating the flow of electricity, so that
Speaker 2: your body stops moving, but your brain to some extent
Speaker 2: remains active only in certain areas. So it's electricity all
Speaker 2: the way down.
Speaker 1: It's meta electricity.
Speaker 2: It's a good band name, good band name.
Speaker 1: I'm going to copyright that when nobody take that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it takes these back seas.
Speaker 1: So I do want to take the time to pull
Speaker 1: apart some of the phenomena that we call electricity, the
Speaker 1: day to day experiences we have of electric current and
Speaker 1: bonds and lightning, and explain that in terms of electric
Speaker 1: charges and electrons what's happening on the microscopic scale. But
Speaker 1: I don't want people to forget that we don't understand
Speaker 1: what's going on at that smaller level. Like we can
Speaker 1: build this bridge between the microscopic and the microscopic, but
Speaker 1: the microscopic remains a mystery that hopefully one day somebody
Speaker 1: will understand, Like what charge is? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah, See, science isn't over yet. Everyone out there who's listening,
Speaker 2: who wants to be a future scientist, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff left for you, a lot of scraps.
Speaker 1: There is in the end charge just this label we
Speaker 1: put on some quantum fields and not on others, and
Speaker 1: it's something we see and describe in the world, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't stop us from building up an understanding from
Speaker 1: this microscopic picture of charge understood or not up to
Speaker 1: the macroscopic experience of electricity. And electricity itself is like
Speaker 1: this grab bag of related concepts, all of which come
Speaker 1: out of the charge of electrons and of quarks. But
Speaker 1: you got like electric bonds, you got electric currents, you
Speaker 1: got lightning, you got static electricity, electric heating, you even
Speaker 1: have a biological electricity. So let's dig in.
Speaker 2: So let's start with electric bonds. I know there are
Speaker 2: different types of forces and different types of bonds, and
Speaker 2: there are like weak and strong forces. Like where do
Speaker 2: electronic bonds sort of fall?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're going to build the macroscopic world, our
Speaker 1: experience of the world out of particles, you got to
Speaker 1: click those particles together. And we know that there are
Speaker 1: some fundamental forces in the universe. There's the strong force,
Speaker 1: the weak force, electromagnetic force, and then there's gravity. In
Speaker 1: the particle world, gravity is irrelevant because it's so weak
Speaker 1: and these particles have basically no mass, and so it's
Speaker 1: just not really a player. The strong force is the
Speaker 1: most powerful, but it's so powerful that it locks itself
Speaker 1: up and neutralizes itself really quickly. So a few quirks
Speaker 1: will feel the strong force, but they tie themselves together
Speaker 1: into like a proton. Once you step outside the proton,
Speaker 1: you can't really feel a strong force anymore. It's sort
Speaker 1: of the same way that like an atom is made
Speaker 1: of a positive electric charge and a negative electric charge,
Speaker 1: but when you're far away from it, the whole thing
Speaker 1: is neutral because those two charges balance. Then the same way,
Speaker 1: a proton has the strong force inside of it, but
Speaker 1: it's so powerful that it's locked itself up and it's neutralized.
Speaker 1: And so then what you're left with is electromagnetism and
Speaker 1: the weak force. And the weak force turns out to
Speaker 1: actually be part of electromagnetism. Check out our podcast on
Speaker 1: the electro weak force. But essentially it's electromagnetism that then
Speaker 1: builds our world. That takes protons and electrons, it symbles
Speaker 1: them together into atoms and then lets those atoms link
Speaker 1: themselves together with electronic bonds to make chemistry and buy
Speaker 1: elogy and everything that we experience.
Speaker 2: So I've got a glass of water here, does this
Speaker 2: glass of water need electricity to be a glass of water.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, absolutely, the water needs electricity. You know, water
Speaker 1: is H two oh, and the hydrogen and the oxygen
Speaker 1: why do they stick together. It's the electrons around the
Speaker 1: hydrogen and the electrons around the oxygen that are doing
Speaker 1: that bonding. The electrons are like the glue in chemistry, right.
Speaker 1: Without them, the protons in the nucleus would not want
Speaker 1: to hang out together. So it's electronic bonds. It's electricity
Speaker 1: at the particle level that builds water out of H
Speaker 1: two and oh. And that's why they call it electrolysis,
Speaker 1: the opposite of making water. Right, you break water down
Speaker 1: into H and oh using electrolysis because it's in the
Speaker 1: end electricity that is building our world.
Speaker 2: Well, I just drink some of it and it tasted
Speaker 2: normal to me, So.
Speaker 1: That's shocking.
Speaker 2: That is interesting that the thing that makes stuff possible,
Speaker 2: like physical stuff are bodies, biological processes, are these electronic
Speaker 2: bonds and differences in charge?
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly. The reason, like some things are sticky
Speaker 1: and some things are shiny, and some things react and
Speaker 1: some things don't, all comes out of his chemical properties,
Speaker 1: which are determined by the electrons in their orbitals and
Speaker 1: whether they like to interact with other stuff or not.
Speaker 1: So like, really, in a very concrete, tactile way, it's
Speaker 1: electricity that determines your experience of the world. The reason
Speaker 1: you can't pass through the wall is because of the
Speaker 1: electronic bonds linking those atoms together. The reason gelato tastes
Speaker 1: delicious is because the interaction of those molecules on your tongue,
Speaker 1: which are electromagnetic interactions, right, the electrons linking together or
Speaker 1: not clicking together into those receptors or not. Our whole
Speaker 1: world and our experience of it is electrical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like I said earlier, our ability to think
Speaker 2: about it is also based on these differences in charge.
Speaker 2: Just the ability for synapses to communicate with each other,
Speaker 2: but also just for any cellular process, right, depends on
Speaker 2: different charges. It's very interesting because there's like I mean,
Speaker 2: it's hard to call it a desire because these are particles,
Speaker 2: but it almost seems like particles kind of seek out
Speaker 2: this homeostasis, like this neutrality that you describe, which is
Speaker 2: also very similar in biological processes, like a cell is
Speaker 2: going to try to the kind of osmosis of water
Speaker 2: through a cell membrane is due to this kind of
Speaker 2: behavior and physics of like you know, salt ions in
Speaker 2: water or the lack of salt to ions. There's this
Speaker 2: need to become stable where you have this homeostasis, and
Speaker 2: so all of that, Like the nature of these particles
Speaker 2: is also reflected in the nature of these biological processes exactly.
Speaker 1: But electrons and electronic bonds and electronic orbitals leads to
Speaker 1: all sorts of fascinating phenomenon beyond just like why gelato
Speaker 1: is tasty and why water is transparent and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: There's more, at least probably the most amazing and powerful
Speaker 1: concept and electricity the one that people mostly think about,
Speaker 1: which is electric current. Right. You know, when you plug
Speaker 1: your thing into the wall, it's creating electric current. When
Speaker 1: you're charging your phone, it's using electric current. This is
Speaker 1: about the motion of charges through materials.
Speaker 2: And I mean this exists outside of just human inventions, right,
Speaker 2: Like there are currents that occur in nature.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, currents flow in nature all the time. You
Speaker 1: can have like streams of particles. You know, the sun
Speaker 1: for example, generates all sorts of charged particles electrons and
Speaker 1: protons and even some anti electrons and when you get
Speaker 1: down to it, like what is electrical current, It's just
Speaker 1: the movement of charge. So if you have like a
Speaker 1: beam of electrons moving through a vacuum, that is current, right,
Speaker 1: charge in motion. That's all that current is. Talk in
Speaker 1: a minute about how that happens inside materials and it
Speaker 1: turns out to be more complicated and really fascinating, but
Speaker 1: it's most basic level. Electric current is just the motion
Speaker 1: of charges. So you take a single electron and you
Speaker 1: like throw it through space, boom, you have electric current.
Speaker 2: So it's the electron moving. So like the electron is
Speaker 2: equivalent to charge, so it's the movement of electrons, which
Speaker 2: is the same as the movement of charge.
Speaker 1: Well, electrons do have charge. You don't need electrons, Like
Speaker 1: you could throw protons also and that would make an
Speaker 1: electric current. But anything that's charged and in motion, that's
Speaker 1: what electric current is. That's like very literally the definition
Speaker 1: of electric current, and that can come out in a
Speaker 1: more complex way from the interplay of all sorts of
Speaker 1: complicated stuff inside metals, and it's a little bit more
Speaker 1: subtle way. In its most pure form, the simplest kind
Speaker 1: of electric charge is just electrons in motion.
Speaker 2: I understand that metals. I mean, depending on the type
Speaker 2: of metal is conductive. So I would assume there's some
Speaker 2: kind of structural property of metal that allows this, and
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is. Probably to the horror
Speaker 2: of my electrical engineering father.
Speaker 1: The electricity in metals is super fascinating and people sometimes
Speaker 1: try to describe electricity as like water flowing down a hose.
Speaker 1: You know, think about like a tube of electrons flowing
Speaker 1: down a hose. And that's almost right, but there are
Speaker 1: important differences that will dig into. But essentially it is
Speaker 1: the motion of electrons through a metal. And like, why
Speaker 1: can electrons move through a metal? If you imagine, like
Speaker 1: your table, it's a bunch of atoms click together, and
Speaker 1: you think, well, they're clicked together with those electrons, how
Speaker 1: can those electrons jump around? Well, if you imagine your
Speaker 1: basic picture of the atom, there's like energy levels, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the electron can be the lowest level or
Speaker 1: the next level up, or the next level up. Our
Speaker 1: idea of like the hydrogen or helium atom, there's all
Speaker 1: these different orbitals, the ladder the electrons allowed to live in.
Speaker 1: And that picture works for one atom. But when you
Speaker 1: have that a bunch of atoms together in a lattice,
Speaker 1: the energy levels become more complicated. Instead of having sharp
Speaker 1: atomic orbitals for individual atoms, instead the interactions between the
Speaker 1: atoms make these bands of allowed energy levels for the electrons.
Speaker 1: So there's like these clusters of energy levels the electrons
Speaker 1: are allowed to be in, rather than just these sharp
Speaker 1: atomic hierarchies.
Speaker 2: It's almost like creating a channel for this charge to
Speaker 2: move through because the atoms are nested together. Is that
Speaker 2: what you're saying, yeah, exactly, And.
Speaker 1: So electrons can sort of slide back and forth between atoms.
Speaker 1: If an atom is totally isolated, the description of it
Speaker 1: having these very precise energy levels is totally valid. But
Speaker 1: bring another atom nearby, and now the nucleus of that
Speaker 1: other atom is going to affect the electrons in the
Speaker 1: first one. And so the right way to think about
Speaker 1: it is that the whole like cluster of atoms have
Speaker 1: energy levels for all of the electrons, and they're not
Speaker 1: really individually assigned to one atom as much anymore, and
Speaker 1: so you just think of them as like they have
Speaker 1: these bands of energy levels the electrons are allowed to
Speaker 1: be in, and they're called the valiance band, which is
Speaker 1: the lowest level of electrons and then the conduction band,
Speaker 1: and the conduction band is where electrons can like hop around.
Speaker 1: If there's empty energy levels in the conduction band, the
Speaker 1: electrons can easily just sort of like slide around the
Speaker 1: material from atom to atom.
Speaker 2: So essentially, these atoms are just behaving like a bunch
Speaker 2: of hippies, sharing food and stuff and letting sort of
Speaker 2: the bruskis just flow freely, and you don't know who's
Speaker 2: bruski it is really at this point, it's just this
Speaker 2: free flowing hippie experience with these atoms and their bands
Speaker 2: of energy levels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's like polyamory for electrons. You know, everybody
Speaker 1: just in sharing.
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever heard of an atomic structure
Speaker 2: described as a polycule, but I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: They're just sharing the love. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: there's different kinds of atoms, and those different kind of
Speaker 1: atoms have different energy levels because you know, the different
Speaker 1: number of protons different number of neutrons change those energy levels.
Speaker 1: And so, for an example, in a metal, these lower
Speaker 1: level bands, the valiance bands, which are filled with electrons,
Speaker 1: are very close to the conduction bands, so it's very
Speaker 1: easy for an electron to like get enough energy to
Speaker 1: get up to the conduction band and like fly around
Speaker 1: the material, whereas in an insulator, like in a ceramic
Speaker 1: for example, there's a big gap in those energy levels.
Speaker 1: So the lower energy levels where all the cold electrons
Speaker 1: are really really far below the super highway where electrons
Speaker 1: can move around, So it takes a lot of energy
Speaker 1: to get the electron up in there. So a conductor
Speaker 1: is one where it's just easier for the electrons to
Speaker 1: get up to this free flowing pathway where they can
Speaker 1: jump around.
Speaker 2: So metal is like Dens Serb and planning like New
Speaker 2: York City, and ceramic is like the boonies in the
Speaker 2: most rural parts of America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right. And you might wonder, like, well, why
Speaker 1: can't those electrons at the lower energy levels also like
Speaker 1: flow around the material. The reason is that they're like
Speaker 1: densely packed in there. It's like the reason that it's
Speaker 1: hard to move through a crowd because it's so crowded,
Speaker 1: you know, there's no room for anyone to slide around,
Speaker 1: or it's like one of those puzzles, you know, where
Speaker 1: you have to like get this piece over there, and
Speaker 1: there's only one hole, slide all these things around.
Speaker 2: So bad at them.
Speaker 1: It's a pain, right, It's a pain to get anything
Speaker 1: from one side to the other because there's always something
Speaker 1: in the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, i'd be a terrible conductor based on my performance
Speaker 2: with those puzzles. I'd be like ceramic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And so the valiance band is like that, it's
Speaker 1: packed really really full. It's like, why it's so much
Speaker 1: harder to get water to slosh in a full bottle
Speaker 1: than in a half empty bottle, and a full bottle
Speaker 1: is nowhere for like the water to move, but in
Speaker 1: a half empty bottle it's easy to slash things around.
Speaker 1: So the conduction band tends to be more empty, which
Speaker 1: means there's room for those electrons to zoom around, whereas
Speaker 1: the vain ban the lower ones usually packed full. The
Speaker 1: conductor is a material where the electrons can jump up
Speaker 1: into this like free roaming range where they can move around.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's like if you've got a clogged freeway
Speaker 2: on ramp, you're not getting on, but if you can
Speaker 2: move and you can merge. We got a zipper, people,
Speaker 2: we all got a zipper. We got to learn from
Speaker 2: the electrons and learn how.
Speaker 1: To zipper exactly. And so when current flows through a wire,
Speaker 1: what's happening is the electrons are moving and the charge
Speaker 1: is flowing. But it's not exactly right to think of
Speaker 1: it like water flowing through a hose or remember that
Speaker 1: picture we had a charge, or like electrons in a
Speaker 1: beam in a vacuum, because the motion of the electrons
Speaker 1: here is more complicated. The electrons are not moving through
Speaker 1: the wire at the speed of light. They're just sort
Speaker 1: of generally like flying around everywhere, and the electric field
Speaker 1: that you impose tends to move them in one direction,
Speaker 1: but it's still a busy area, so they're bumping into
Speaker 1: each other and changing directions. So it's more like a
Speaker 1: wave moving through the electrons, and that wave is moving
Speaker 1: at the speed of light, even if an individual electron
Speaker 1: is not. It's sort of like the way a wave
Speaker 1: can move through a crowd or like a mosh pit
Speaker 1: or something, even if an individual person is still just
Speaker 1: sort of like bouncing around a little bit.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, like this charge is moving even if the
Speaker 2: electron itself is not just individually transporting it all the
Speaker 2: way to its.
Speaker 1: Goal exactly one individual electron, it's going to zigzag a bit,
Speaker 1: and it's going to pass that energy down to another electron,
Speaker 1: and another electron and another electron. So in effect, the
Speaker 1: electric field and the charge is moving at the speed
Speaker 1: of light, but no individual electron is like actually moving
Speaker 1: through the wire at the speed of light. So this
Speaker 1: is this difference between the speed of an individual electron
Speaker 1: and the speed of the waves through the electrons, which
Speaker 1: is what is moving at the speed of light.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. It's not as simple as like cars
Speaker 2: moving on a road. I mean even in say like
Speaker 2: you have crowd dynamics with people. Once you get people
Speaker 2: squished in enough, which is not good, it's very dangerous.
Speaker 2: But you do start to see people moving as like particles,
Speaker 2: and you see this thing where energy transfers from person
Speaker 2: to person. Even though the people themselves aren't pushing the
Speaker 2: people at the very front, the people at the very
Speaker 2: front will start to get shoved just by this force,
Speaker 2: even if it was started by someone at the back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the traffic analogy is really helpful. Also, if
Speaker 1: somebody along the freeway slams on the brakes, then the
Speaker 1: pattern brake lights moves backwards through traffic much much faster
Speaker 1: than any of the cars are moving right and so
Speaker 1: there you can see like the wave is moving faster
Speaker 1: than any of the individual cars. And that's exactly what's
Speaker 1: happening with electricity and electrons. In metals, an individual electron
Speaker 1: is mostly flying around randomly. You apply a field to
Speaker 1: sort of like get the electrons to move in one
Speaker 1: direction to create a current, But the individual electrons are
Speaker 1: mostly just zigzagging around. They're bouncing off each other, and
Speaker 1: the net effect is to get some current down wire,
Speaker 1: but no individual electron is actually moving at the speed
Speaker 1: of light.
Speaker 2: Is this why there are certain metals and certain things
Speaker 2: that are better conductors or worse because you've somehow optimized
Speaker 2: the ability of the electrons to kind of zigzag in
Speaker 2: the right direction.
Speaker 1: Now, that has to do mostly with the difference between
Speaker 1: the valance band and the conduction band. How easy it
Speaker 1: is to get the electrons from the convalence band. It's
Speaker 1: like jam packed creative electrons up into the highway where
Speaker 1: they can move more freely, where it's like less traffic.
Speaker 2: I see, Okay, the on ramp is very important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's all about the.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to come up with some more driving
Speaker 2: metaphors during a quick break and then when we get back,
Speaker 2: let's learn more about electricity and how to drive safely. Okay,
Speaker 2: So we are back in an electron traffic school. So
Speaker 2: I'm an electron and I'm part of this big party
Speaker 2: moving through this wire, and I'm bonking into the electron
Speaker 2: in front of me, and we're just kind of creating
Speaker 2: this wave of charge that's moving through whatever conductive material
Speaker 2: we are in exactly.
Speaker 1: And that motion happens because you have an electric field,
Speaker 1: somebody's applied an external voltage, you have a battery or
Speaker 1: something putting an electric field on all those charges to
Speaker 1: move them along. And it's very easy to move things
Speaker 1: along in a metal because there's all these electrons that
Speaker 1: are free. But you could also try to do this
Speaker 1: to something that's an insulator something where there aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of electrons. Very easy to move around, and then
Speaker 1: it takes a lot more energy to create a current,
Speaker 1: but it is possible if you have a very strong
Speaker 1: electrical field between the clouds and the ground. Eventually it
Speaker 1: will those electrons off of those atoms and they will
Speaker 1: create a current between the cloud and the ground. And
Speaker 1: that's what lightning is.
Speaker 2: Okay, And is that why there's just so much energy
Speaker 2: in lightning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because it takes a huge amount of electric
Speaker 1: field to ionize the air, to rip those electrons off
Speaker 1: of those atoms inside the air, to create basically a
Speaker 1: channel where that current can flow, because air is not
Speaker 1: that easy to ionizing. A very strong electric field to
Speaker 1: have to build up a lot of power, and then
Speaker 1: once it's released, it's very dramatic.
Speaker 2: And is that all coming from these water particles that
Speaker 2: are contained in these clouds that are all having a
Speaker 2: bunch of activity, right, Like you know, the classic understanding
Speaker 2: of lightning is it comes from clouds kind of rubbing
Speaker 2: up against each other. But it seems like maybe at
Speaker 2: the sort of particle level that would be more complicated.
Speaker 1: No, I think that's basically it. It's cloud friction. You know,
Speaker 1: air molecules and s bended water droplet, the collides, they
Speaker 1: swirl around in these clouds, and then the warmer airs
Speaker 1: and the water droplets rise, carrying those charges with them,
Speaker 1: and so as a result, you get this excess of
Speaker 1: positive charge near the cloud tops and an excess of
Speaker 1: negative charge in the bottom layers of the clouds. So
Speaker 1: that's how you get like lightning within a cloud, and
Speaker 1: so the friction basically between these droplets is creating an
Speaker 1: electric field, and eventually you need lightning to sort of
Speaker 1: smooth that out.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting to me because I was not as
Speaker 2: aware of like the lightning that just occurred within the clouds,
Speaker 2: because when I lived in southern California, for some reason,
Speaker 2: most of our lightning storms was the lightning where it's
Speaker 2: the difference in charge between the cloud and the ground,
Speaker 2: where it actually hits the ground. But here in northern
Speaker 2: Italy there's a ton of lightning storms where the lightning
Speaker 2: never actually hits the ground. It's all happening in the clouds,
Speaker 2: and it's happening a lot, like very rapidly, which is
Speaker 2: new to me, where it's just this constant kind of
Speaker 2: one after the other, but none of it is hitting
Speaker 2: the ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really fascinating because the lightning inside the cloud
Speaker 1: then helps build up and create lightning between the cloud
Speaker 1: and the ground. So you have like the top of
Speaker 1: the cloud becomes positively charged, and then bottom of the
Speaker 1: cloud becomes negatively charged, and the ground is positively charged.
Speaker 1: And then when the negative charges on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the cloud reach a level that's sufficient to overcome this
Speaker 1: insulation of the air. Then that's when the lightning strikes
Speaker 1: from the bottom of the cloud to the ground.
Speaker 2: Why is the ground positively charged? Is that just the
Speaker 2: nature of most sort of physical objects or is it
Speaker 2: something specific about the Earth's ground.
Speaker 1: I think as these water droplets evaporate, they tend to
Speaker 1: pull up the electric charges to the clouds, leaving the
Speaker 1: ground positively charged.
Speaker 2: Oh. Interesting. If you're about to be hit by lightning, right,
Speaker 2: and you're you're a little human, what should you do?
Speaker 2: Should you run around in a circle screaming? Should you
Speaker 2: get under a tall tree? Should you curse at the heavens?
Speaker 2: Or maybe like bow down to thor like, what's the
Speaker 2: game plan for me a human? If I am caught
Speaker 2: in a thunderstorm?
Speaker 1: You should take that last bite of toast and get
Speaker 1: your fears in order.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take a raw bread and like holt it
Speaker 2: up over my head, so if I get struck by lightning,
Speaker 2: I'll have some toast.
Speaker 1: You should hope that there's a lightning rod nearby, something
Speaker 1: that the lightning wants to zap instead of you, right,
Speaker 1: Because the lightning is going to choose the easiest path.
Speaker 1: It's going to find the channel that's easiest to ionize.
Speaker 1: And if you watch a lightning strike in action, it's
Speaker 1: actually really fascinating. Give this image in your mind that
Speaker 1: it's like a bolt from the heavens, right, it comes
Speaker 1: from the top to the bottom.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Zeus throwing a zigzag down at Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But if you watch it in super slow motion,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. You can see the bolt exploring different options,
Speaker 1: like lightning coming down to the ground is splitting and
Speaker 1: exploring lots of different ways to potentially behind the ground.
Speaker 1: And only when it makes that connection does the energy
Speaker 1: actually pass up from the ground to the cloud. So
Speaker 1: in solmotion it's kind of slow and exploration on like branches,
Speaker 1: and then once it connects to the ground, you see
Speaker 1: this huge bolt pass up from the ground to the cloud.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I have actually seen video of that, and
Speaker 2: that's so interesting because it's like this sort of almost
Speaker 2: vein like structure of the lightning. Another interesting thing is
Speaker 2: that people who survive getting struck by lightning, which I
Speaker 2: don't recommend, they actually sometimes have these scars, not like
Speaker 2: Harry Potter with a zigzag, it's that same sort of
Speaker 2: like reticulated like vein like pattern, because the way that
Speaker 2: the electricity is moving in, you know, in the clouds
Speaker 2: or in the sky, is probably similar to the way
Speaker 2: that electricity is moving inside the human body.
Speaker 1: Creepy. That is creepy, isn't it it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of cool though. I think that if I
Speaker 2: got struck by lightning, I would want a cool lightning scar.
Speaker 2: So people believe me, because if someone tells you I've
Speaker 2: been struck by lightning, I think, well, okay, I don't know,
Speaker 2: because you would be you'd be toast m m.
Speaker 1: Well. It's also just cool to think about the microphysics
Speaker 1: of what's happening there. You know, these incredible electric field
Speaker 1: between the cloud and the ground are enough to pull
Speaker 1: the electrons off the atoms in the air, making them charged,
Speaker 1: turning this thing into a plasma. Plasma is just a
Speaker 1: gas where the electrons have been pulled off of their atoms,
Speaker 1: and now those electrons are free to move because they're
Speaker 1: not bound to the atoms, and so now it's conducting.
Speaker 1: It's like a wire of air, and then the electricity
Speaker 1: passes through that in the same way. You know, the
Speaker 1: electrons get pulled by that field and the ions move
Speaker 1: in the other direction, and that's how the charge passes.
Speaker 1: And it's an incredible amount of energy in one of
Speaker 1: these things. You know, a single lightning strike has a
Speaker 1: billion jewels of energy, which is a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: I mean, like just to calibrate the rock when he
Speaker 1: punches somebody has about four hundred jewels of energy. So
Speaker 1: getting hit by lightning is like getting punched by the
Speaker 1: rock two and a half million times.
Speaker 2: I think I could take that on the chin.
Speaker 1: You're pretty tough, kitty, but I'm gonna have to go
Speaker 1: with a rock on this one. But lightning is not
Speaker 1: something we even really fully understand because if you look
Speaker 1: at the field between the cloud and the ground, it's
Speaker 1: not actually enough. They can calculate how big an electric
Speaker 1: field you need to make this ionization to create a
Speaker 1: tube of plasma, and then they measure the electric field
Speaker 1: and it's not big enough, so they don't actually understand
Speaker 1: like where all that energy is coming from. One theory
Speaker 1: is that maybe it's cosmic rays, like particles through space
Speaker 1: shooting through the cloud with incredible energy, are maybe like
Speaker 1: sparking this lightning and making it happen. It's a field
Speaker 1: of open research right now, and people are doing things
Speaker 1: like trying to understand where in the world is there
Speaker 1: more lightning, because it turns out it varies a lot.
Speaker 1: Like Europe lightning is much more rare than it is
Speaker 1: in like Florida, for example.
Speaker 2: H Yeah, that's interesting because there are and it seems
Speaker 2: like it depends on things like the environment, right, like
Speaker 2: the type of biome that you're in. And I've heard
Speaker 2: of things like ball lightning or something which I don't
Speaker 2: even know like if that's an actual thing that really exists,
Speaker 2: because it's really hard to document, but you know, it's
Speaker 2: something that people say they've seen, and it's always in
Speaker 2: like these very very humid areas. So it seems like
Speaker 2: having like a very different area, very different region, might
Speaker 2: affect the way that these electric charge forces work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna have a whole episode on ball lightning.
Speaker 1: That is a crazy Bonker story with a lot of
Speaker 1: really fun history.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm excited to listen.
Speaker 1: But next, let's talk about your dog and your blanket.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I like my dog and I like my blanket.
Speaker 2: I've got a photo of her hair standing on end.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll share that with you all because it's very cute.
Speaker 2: She doesn't seem to be bothered by it, and like
Speaker 2: I said, she loves this blanket.
Speaker 1: So what's going on When you have like your hair
Speaker 1: standing on end, or when you're wearing a blanket and
Speaker 1: you get a zap on the carpet or something like
Speaker 1: that. That's static electricity. It's basically a miniature form of lightning.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Lightning occurs when you have a strong electric field across
Speaker 1: an insulator. So the insulator there aren't usually electrons that
Speaker 1: want to move to create a current when you apply
Speaker 1: a field, but if you make a big enough field,
Speaker 1: it'll break down. It'll rip those electrons out of the atoms.
Speaker 1: That's lightning right. Well, static electricity is the same phenomenon,
Speaker 1: just over a much shorter distance. So you don't need
Speaker 1: a huge cosmic electric field to create static between like
Speaker 1: your finger and the door knob, or between like you
Speaker 1: and your dog. You need a much smaller field, and
Speaker 1: so you can get a bunch of electrons like from
Speaker 1: one thing to another. You can create this imbalance, you
Speaker 1: can create this electric field, and you can get static electricity.
Speaker 2: So I can understand the little zamp I get from
Speaker 2: like my fingertip to the door knob. But why do
Speaker 2: you things stick to me? Like if I rub my
Speaker 2: socks on the floor, I can get a balloon to
Speaker 2: stick to me. You shared a picture of this cat
Speaker 2: covered in little pieces of styrofoam that are stuck to it,
Speaker 2: which I love this picture. Thank you for that. So
Speaker 2: why does static electricity make us sticky?
Speaker 1: This picture is actually featured on the official Wikipedia page
Speaker 1: for static electricity. Well suggests everybody go to this famous
Speaker 1: cat that must must have had like the worst day ever,
Speaker 1: or maybe the best day diving around a bunch of
Speaker 1: styrophoaming nuts.
Speaker 2: Looks like he's having fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is static cling. If you move a
Speaker 1: bunch of electrons from one object to another, then there's
Speaker 1: going to be a force of attraction between them. And
Speaker 1: that's fundamentally what's happening here is that you're moving elects
Speaker 1: from one thing to another. Like if you take a
Speaker 1: piece of styrofoam and you rub it on your cat, right,
Speaker 1: then the electron is going to move from one object
Speaker 1: to another. And now one of these things is positive
Speaker 1: and one of these things is negative, and so they're
Speaker 1: going to attract each other. So now the styrofoam peanut
Speaker 1: is attracted to your cat because of an electrical bond
Speaker 1: between them.
Speaker 2: And it's got to be light enough, right, because the
Speaker 2: styrofoam and the balloon, these are both very light things.
Speaker 2: If it's too heavy, then gravity is actually enough to
Speaker 2: pull that away from you. If you're in a space station,
Speaker 2: is static electricity like more powerful than it is on Earth?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Could you get something heavier to stick to you?
Speaker 1: Can you get bowling balls to stick to your space cat?
Speaker 1: Is that what you're asking me? Yeah? Yeah, actually you could.
Speaker 1: That's true. I don't think anybody ever tried that. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to get that listed on the official
Speaker 1: experiment we're going to do on then iss, that sounds great.
Speaker 2: We need a cat, some styrofoam, and some bowling balls.
Speaker 1: And so this is also revealing like the microscopic nature
Speaker 1: of charge. That charge is carried by these tiny, basically
Speaker 1: invisible little particles that can move from one thing to
Speaker 1: another but then have a visible effect. Right, It's this
Speaker 1: way the universe is like cracking open and giving you
Speaker 1: a clue that deep down there's something to learn about
Speaker 1: the tiny invisible world that makes up our visible world.
Speaker 1: So I love about this effect. And some living things
Speaker 1: of course, have figured out how to use this to
Speaker 1: their advantage. They are, of course electrical eels, but they're
Speaker 1: also like fish that can like sense electric fields, aren't there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so electric eels are actually not true eels. They
Speaker 2: are knife fish. But there are multiple fish in the world,
Speaker 2: multiple like species in groups of fish that can sense
Speaker 2: and produce electricity. So one of these knife fish, which
Speaker 2: is sort of eel like, so we call it an
Speaker 2: electric eel, produces its own sort of electric field, and
Speaker 2: it's this electrophoress electricus, and that's the most famous one
Speaker 2: because it can really zap you because it produces quite
Speaker 2: a strong electric field.
Speaker 1: So it's got some organ inside it that can make
Speaker 1: electric fields.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. Which, so the way these organs work
Speaker 2: is it's similar to how our muscles work. So our
Speaker 2: muscles actually produce a little bit of electricity when they
Speaker 2: are activated. And so this is actually what enables electroreceptive
Speaker 2: animals like sharks and platypuses. Actually, platypuses have electro receptors
Speaker 2: in their bills, and so they can hunt down earthworms
Speaker 2: much like a shark can hunt down fish. Because both
Speaker 2: of these animals have electro receptors, totally different species, totally
Speaker 2: different evolutionary path So in these electric eels, which are
Speaker 2: actually nine fish, they produce this electric field through an
Speaker 2: organ that is basically like a really kind of powerful muscle,
Speaker 2: where it's the power is through the ability to produce
Speaker 2: this electrical charge, this electrical field, not in its ability
Speaker 2: to say like lift weights, and so this is the
Speaker 2: case for a lot of species that produce this electric field.
Speaker 2: So what's interesting is a lot of these animals that
Speaker 2: produce electric fields also have electro receptors, so they are
Speaker 2: using their electric field to see their world. You know
Speaker 2: how dolphins and bats will send something out into the
Speaker 2: world and then receive information back in order to see
Speaker 2: So bats to use sort of like a sonar where
Speaker 2: they send out a ping, a little squeak and then
Speaker 2: they receive it back so that they can see dolphins
Speaker 2: the same thing. They're doing this with electricity. So they
Speaker 2: are generating this electric field, and if things in their
Speaker 2: environment disrupt this electric field, they can sense that because
Speaker 2: they also have electro receptors. And it actually this is
Speaker 2: evolved in multiple types of fish. So like there's also
Speaker 2: a fun one which I think is less well known
Speaker 2: than the nine fish, which is the elephant nosed fish,
Speaker 2: which has a really long nose. It's very goofy looking,
Speaker 2: and it's actually not a nose. It's a protrusion of
Speaker 2: the lower jaw. And it's got the best name of
Speaker 2: any body part in all of evolutionary biology. It's called this.
Speaker 1: Is it safe for work?
Speaker 2: It is safe for work. Yes, it's called the Schnauzen organ,
Speaker 2: which I don't know. Maybe if you speak a German
Speaker 2: it's not safe for work, but it sounds fine to me.
Speaker 2: The Schnauzen organ.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's very dignified. I'm sure it carries itself
Speaker 1: with great poise.
Speaker 2: It's very goofy looking. And yeah, that Schnauzen organ contains
Speaker 2: all of these electro receptors. And then it also has
Speaker 2: on its posterior that at electric field generating organ. Now
Speaker 2: it's much weaker than in that electric eel that I mentioned,
Speaker 2: but again it uses the same sort of method where
Speaker 2: it generates that field and if there's disruption in the field,
Speaker 2: then it can locate things. It's like human sonar that
Speaker 2: we use in terms of like sending out a ping
Speaker 2: and receiving it back just using that electric field.
Speaker 1: Wow, amazing It's incredible to me the humans have discovered
Speaker 1: this in the world, but the animals have been using
Speaker 1: this for millennia. Right, It's something more natural intuitive. I
Speaker 1: wonder if it would have been easier for us to
Speaker 1: figure out how electricity worked if we had electrical organs,
Speaker 1: or if electricity played like a more tactile role in
Speaker 1: our experience, not just like within our nervous system and
Speaker 1: inside of our brains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we had electro reception, you know, there could
Speaker 2: be a whole different method of communication.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: If we had both an ability to produce an electric
Speaker 2: field and electro reception, maybe we could have formed some
Speaker 2: kind of communication that is like similar to telepathy, where
Speaker 2: we don't need to say anything, we just sort of
Speaker 2: detect the waves in our electrical fields.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you could get phone calls without needing
Speaker 1: a phone, right, or here radio stations in your mind.
Speaker 2: Fun.
Speaker 1: I think the bigger picture here is that electricity really
Speaker 1: is a product of the quantum particle nature of our world.
Speaker 1: And this is not just something particle physicists think about.
Speaker 1: This is something that we can experience day to day,
Speaker 1: the charge of particles, the forces between them. This is
Speaker 1: part of our experience too.
Speaker 2: I really like how these patterns of how particles work
Speaker 2: on this quantum level also seems to be kind of
Speaker 2: reiterated in the more bigger picture, like on the macro level,
Speaker 2: in terms of cell processes and terms of like say,
Speaker 2: how a herd moves or how people move it.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting, it is fascinating, and of course huge
Speaker 1: questions remain. What is the charge of an electron? Why
Speaker 1: does it exist? Why have charges? Why don't neutrinos have charge?
Speaker 1: Why does the universe respect charge so so deeply when
Speaker 1: other symmetries and conservation laws are broken here and there
Speaker 1: and at the edges. These are mysteries. I hope one
Speaker 1: of our listeners will one day figure out, and then
Speaker 1: we'll invite them on the podcast to explain it.
Speaker 2: All to you, and you'll write a paper titled what
Speaker 2: is going On?
Speaker 1: Thank you Katie for coming along and for delivering the
Speaker 1: very best and the very last electricity pun of the episode.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Tune in next time everyone. For more science and curiosity,
Speaker 1: come find us on social media, where we answer questions
Speaker 1: and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant, and now TikTok.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain
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