Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Joshum. For this week's Select, I've chosen
Speaker 1: our twenty fourteen episode on electricity, and I chose it
Speaker 1: as a kind of Casey Casum esque special dedication to
Speaker 1: one of our younger listeners, Charlie Pendergrast, who wrote in
Speaker 1: with a bunch of good ideas, one of which was electricity. Well,
Speaker 1: rather than just send him a link and being boring,
Speaker 1: I thought I'd share it as a select for everybody
Speaker 1: to enjoy. So if you enjoy this select, you can
Speaker 1: thank Charlie. Thanks Charlie.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing his
Speaker 1: last Chance garage hat, which means that all is right
Speaker 1: with the world. Yeah, you know, if Chuck's not wearing
Speaker 1: that hat, who knows what's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought a loss of sing yeah once. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I.
Speaker 1: Vaguely remember that dude freaked.
Speaker 2: I was on the with Delta and everything, and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, here it is.
Speaker 1: It's on my head your back pocket, like Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Uh, how you doing great, Chuck, Yes, let's talk about electricity, electricity, electricity.
Speaker 1: I've had the Talking Heads song in my head, which
Speaker 1: one electricity? Okay, where all these sees are little dots.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say once in a lifetime. No,
Speaker 1: that's what is that called once in a lifetime? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I've been singing the Schoolhouse Rock electricity song
Speaker 3: over and over in my head.
Speaker 1: What about the electric company theme song? Mmm, I haven't
Speaker 1: been singing that, but do you remember it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was I was electric Company over Sesame Street even.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't think there had to be like
Speaker 1: a you know, I didn't know it was like the
Speaker 1: Stones or the Beatles, you know.
Speaker 2: No, it's uh and the correct answer there's the Who.
Speaker 1: By the way, what do you mean like that?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 1: Is that? Right?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I love the Who, But I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I don't see the need to rank things like that.
Speaker 1: Well, Plus, the electric Company came on after Sesame Street,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it skewed slightly older.
Speaker 3: I think Sesame Street to me felt like, you know,
Speaker 3: six seven eight year olds.
Speaker 2: Electric companies were.
Speaker 1: Like eight, nine to ten, twelve, and then even younger
Speaker 1: than Sesame Street was Pinwheel if I remember correctly, and
Speaker 1: that was after your time, Okay, Pinwell was pretty cute.
Speaker 1: It was like little kids, and then Sesame Street was
Speaker 1: like little kids, and then Electric Company was like cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Romper Room was kind of pre Sesame Street.
Speaker 1: Even so, was that the one with Reggedy Ann and Andy? Mmm?
Speaker 2: I don't remember. I just remember it was very immature. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very childish.
Speaker 1: You think Raggedy Ann and Andy were in that. Well.
Speaker 1: At any rate, we've angered enough people now, I know.
Speaker 1: I have an intro for this one.
Speaker 2: Great.
Speaker 1: Okay, you ready, about thirteen point eight billion years ago,
Speaker 1: a little something called the Big Bang happened and the
Speaker 1: universe was created, so says you, So this is a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Yeah, you know, we weren't around. Nobody
Speaker 1: saw it, but it's been detected and it's strongly suspected
Speaker 1: by scientists that the universe is thirteen point eight billion
Speaker 1: years old and that it came from something called the
Speaker 1: Big Bang, which, by the way, I would love to
Speaker 1: do an episode on. Yeah, let's do it, okay, and
Speaker 1: under the auspices of the Big Bang theory, not the
Speaker 1: TV show, but the actual theory. At that moment, all
Speaker 1: of the energy in the entire universe was created. Right then,
Speaker 1: boom bam. Ever, since that point the energy has no
Speaker 1: more energy has been created and none of that energy
Speaker 1: has been destroyed. But it changes states, it changes shapes,
Speaker 1: It can be locked up in different places. It can
Speaker 1: be transferred from one place to another via some natural
Speaker 1: ways like convection, conduction, radiation, and like I said, it
Speaker 1: can be stored in stuff. It can be stored in
Speaker 1: your body. Right. Fat is potential energy that can be
Speaker 1: burned and used for energy to carry out work, which
Speaker 1: is all we're looking to do is work. We use
Speaker 1: energy to carry out work, whether it's digging a shovel
Speaker 1: or lighting a light bulb. That's what energy does. It
Speaker 1: produces work. Right, Okay, we've figured out along the way
Speaker 1: that we don't have to wait around for radiation or
Speaker 1: convection or conduction to do its thing to provide energy,
Speaker 1: because we'd have a lot of waiting to do. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't be in the computer age right now if it
Speaker 1: weren't for something called electricity, which is basically how humans
Speaker 1: have figured out how to harness converting energy from one
Speaker 1: type of another and then transmitting it very long distance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because electricity isn't a primary energy source like the sun
Speaker 1: or solar radiation, or nuclear energy or even the flow
Speaker 1: of water kinetic energy. No, it's created, yeah, it's and
Speaker 1: it's a secondary energy source. It's a carrier, that's right.
Speaker 1: So electricity carries energy from one point to another. And
Speaker 1: if you understand that, you understand the very basis of
Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like we've figured out how to generate electricity to carry
Speaker 1: energy to produce work down the line.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: That's my intra which is usually mechanical energy is what's
Speaker 3: produced right by a machine.
Speaker 1: Yes, so think about this, like, if you capture mechanical
Speaker 1: energy like water spinning a turbine, which we'll talk about, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Niagara Falls, that's not going to do anything to
Speaker 1: light your light bulb two hundred miles away.
Speaker 2: No, not by itself.
Speaker 1: No, unless you connect the two, you send the work
Speaker 1: produced the energy captured in Niagara Falls down to your
Speaker 1: light bulb. And that's what we do using electricity.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty simple. Actually, it seems complicated, but it's not. No,
Speaker 3: just electrons moving around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about electrons. Man, let's talk about the atom.
Speaker 3: Well, should we talk about the history of this stuff? Yes,
Speaker 3: let's back in the olden days. In ancient times, there
Speaker 3: were dudes messing around with energy and static electricity without
Speaker 3: even knowing what they were doing. Right, they didn't understand it.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that they weren't playing around with.
Speaker 1: It, No, and getting zapped because they're messing with static electricity.
Speaker 3: That's right, which we'll explain all that later to But
Speaker 3: there was one dude called Dallas of Melitas. He is
Speaker 3: a philosopher in Greece and in six hundred BC he
Speaker 3: is thought to have been the first dude to around
Speaker 3: with electrostatics static electricity by rubbing amber with fur, and
Speaker 3: he noticed that dust and feathers and things were attracted
Speaker 3: to it. He didn't know what the heck was going on,
Speaker 3: but he knew something.
Speaker 1: Was up right, and the amber plays a pretty big role.
Speaker 1: It's actually amber. The Latin er I'm sorry is it Greek?
Speaker 1: Greek Greek word for amber is electron with a K.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was like.
Speaker 2: The way heavy metal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, but that's so like our Our word
Speaker 1: electricity is derived from the Greek word for amber. From
Speaker 1: that first experiment with static electricity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was actually coined by a dude named
Speaker 3: William Gilbert. He was an Englishman, a physician, and he
Speaker 3: was studying sort of the same things with static electricity
Speaker 3: that Militis was. And he was the first person to
Speaker 3: say it's electric when he saw these forces at work.
Speaker 1: With an exclamation point and his finger in the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should probably we should probably differentiate, like there's
Speaker 1: a couple of types of electricity. There's static electricity, and
Speaker 1: then there's current electricity, right, and current electricity is what
Speaker 1: we are able to generate artificially. Static electricity exists in
Speaker 1: nature just naturally. Yes, and that was the first experiments
Speaker 1: carried out. Then there's other types of current electricity like lightning.
Speaker 1: But at this time when these people are messing with
Speaker 1: electric or static electricity or saying it's electric for the
Speaker 1: first time, yeah, the concept electricity was that it was fluid.
Speaker 2: Well, it was fluid. He was on the right track.
Speaker 2: Something is flowing.
Speaker 3: But they thought it was literally a fluid which they
Speaker 3: called which.
Speaker 2: In those days was called a humor.
Speaker 3: And he said it leaves what he called then an
Speaker 3: afflu vivvum effluvium, right, which is atmosphere around it. When
Speaker 3: you create this rubbing action, it removes that fluid. But
Speaker 3: it wasn't fluid. They were not dummies back then, but
Speaker 3: they were just figuring it all out.
Speaker 1: No, they weren't dummies because even Ben Franklin thought it
Speaker 1: was a fluid. It was the prevailing idea concept of electricity,
Speaker 1: and Ben Franklin and a couple of his contemporaries, including
Speaker 1: a guy named Thomas Francois Dalibard, were studying electricity big time,
Speaker 1: and it was when they really investigated lightning that our
Speaker 1: understanding of current electricity started to take shape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the old story of Ben Franklin flying his kite
Speaker 3: may or may not have happened. There are some people
Speaker 3: that think that didn't happen now.
Speaker 1: But if he didn't do it, other people did. There
Speaker 1: were guys who died carrying out that experiment. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it was definitely carried out. I don't know if Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin did or not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sort of the story that he flew the
Speaker 3: kite with the key, and some people think it either
Speaker 3: didn't go down like that or didn't go down with
Speaker 3: him at all.
Speaker 2: But it's a great story either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think he at least proposed it the experiment.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was the first guy to say that
Speaker 3: electricity has a positive and negative charge and that it
Speaker 3: flows from positive to negative.
Speaker 2: So he's a smart guy, very smart.
Speaker 1: He's a polymn.
Speaker 3: Then there was another smart dude named Coulomb, Charles Augustin
Speaker 3: de Coulomb, and he is the one that wrote Coulomb's law.
Speaker 3: And he said, charges like charges repel, opposite charges attract,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of like the basis for it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the force of these charges is proportional to
Speaker 1: their product. So if you multiply the charges, they are
Speaker 1: going to be very strong or canceled on another out
Speaker 1: or push one another away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He basically said, you can now calculate this right because
Speaker 3: of my handy dandy little law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and with a boom, he said boom, not bang. Okay,
Speaker 1: that came earlier later on.
Speaker 2: A guy named J. J.
Speaker 3: Thompson in eighteen ninety seven said at a science conference, Hey,
Speaker 3: I found something smaller than the atom. And everyone said, silly, man,
Speaker 3: atoms are invisible. You can't it even means invisible.
Speaker 2: You liar, And he said no, I promise it's there's
Speaker 2: something smaller, it's got a negative charge, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to call it a corpuscle.
Speaker 1: No he didn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is Latin for small bodies. And then I think,
Speaker 3: I don't know who later said let's change it to electron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds way cooler.
Speaker 3: But the discovery of the electron was basically the birth
Speaker 3: of what we know is electricity today. Yeah, the understanding
Speaker 3: of the electron is what it's all about.
Speaker 1: And would you say, like eighteen ninety seven, yes, So
Speaker 1: before that time, I guess he didn't understand the electron,
Speaker 1: but he understood electricity. A guy named Michael Faraday was
Speaker 1: working on the.
Speaker 2: Case stud Yeah.
Speaker 1: Basically everybody's like Ben frank on electricity hand in hand.
Speaker 1: Really it's Michael Faraday, who is British, who really came
Speaker 1: to the foundation for electrifying the world. He just he
Speaker 1: created the first dynamo, which is a generator which we'll
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 2: He first electric motor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he just he got electricity and he explained
Speaker 1: it to other people very well.
Speaker 3: Can you even fathom how smart these people were to
Speaker 3: be that in the dark and figuring all this subatomic
Speaker 3: stuff out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Back then, hats off, top, Hats off to these guys.
Speaker 2: Last chance garageot off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm back on, Like I have trouble understanding it now,
Speaker 1: right when it's explained through like Kids for Science website,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Like inventing this, figuring this stuff out with the first time.
Speaker 1: Right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's a pretty dangerous field to try to figure
Speaker 1: out blind too, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean more than one scientist got a shock
Speaker 2: from a Leyden jar. Oh yeah, and you can make those, dud?
Speaker 2: Did you make those in science class?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can make those.
Speaker 1: Well, it's we should say a leaden jar is a
Speaker 1: very primitive capacitor to use a metal rod in a jar,
Speaker 1: a nail that's sunk into like some water, and it
Speaker 1: can store a charge. I think Ben Franklin's kite experiment
Speaker 1: attached the kite to or a rod or something to
Speaker 1: a laden jar to store the charge too, if that happened, right,
Speaker 1: But again, he did make the proposal. It's whether or
Speaker 1: not he carried it out as it's question.
Speaker 3: All right, I guess now we can get the atoms finally.
Speaker 3: Atoms are very tiny and they make up molecules and
Speaker 3: molecules make up everything you see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, atoms are the building block of matter. That's right,
Speaker 1: an atam. Remember we're always talking about nature loves homeostasis,
Speaker 1: Oh man does it? You've got a balance that nature
Speaker 1: always seeks tries to achieve it. Same with atoms or
Speaker 1: atoms are no exception. I should say within an atom,
Speaker 1: you have a nucleus which is made up of protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons. Protons are positively charged particles, neutrons are neutral.
Speaker 1: And then orbiting that nucleus making the cool atom symbol
Speaker 1: are electrons and they're negatively charged. Right, And when you
Speaker 1: have an equal number of protons to electrons, you have
Speaker 1: a neutral atom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no potential energy there. It's just in balance.
Speaker 3: And a lot of stuff is like that. A lot
Speaker 3: of stuff is in balance, some stuff is not well.
Speaker 1: Some stuff falls out of balance easier than other stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the electrons sometimes they're super tightly bound to
Speaker 3: the atom and they don't want to leave the house.
Speaker 3: They want to stick around. Sometimes they're crazy teenagers and
Speaker 3: the slightest energy and movement makes them jump off from
Speaker 3: the atom and just say I want to go attach
Speaker 3: myself to something else.
Speaker 1: We go on rum Springer. Yeah, yeah, and it depends
Speaker 1: on the material. And those types of material that have
Speaker 1: either tightly connected or loosely connected atoms either end up
Speaker 1: conducting electricity very well or don't conduct electricity very well,
Speaker 1: so they act as either electrical conductors or electrical insulators.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like, if you pick up a stick off the ground,
Speaker 3: it's electrons like staying close to home, so it's not
Speaker 3: going to conduct electricity. If you pick up a metal rod,
Speaker 3: those electrons are crazy loose and they like to go
Speaker 3: off and do those things that teenage electrons do, and
Speaker 3: therefore it does conduct electricity.
Speaker 2: Right very well.
Speaker 1: Under normal circumstances. When you pick up that rod or
Speaker 1: you pick up that stick, the electrons are staying put
Speaker 1: no matter what. But we figured out along the way
Speaker 1: thanks to the work of all of the people, from
Speaker 1: the Greeks to Faraday, to Ben Franklin to your guy
Speaker 1: with the core puscle idea. Yeah, JJ, what's his name, Yeah, JJ,
Speaker 1: core Puzzle, I think Thompson. So thanks to the work
Speaker 1: of all of these people, we figured out how to
Speaker 1: knock electrons loose. And it's ingenious and simple, but it's
Speaker 1: also very complex, and it involves the relationship between magnetism
Speaker 1: and electricity. So Chuck, yes, we're talking about knocking electrons loose,
Speaker 1: which is ultimately the basis of producing electricity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like when you were a kid in elementary school,
Speaker 3: you probably did the little balloon trick where you make
Speaker 3: static electricity and make the balloon stick to your sweater.
Speaker 3: All you're doing, you're rubbing that balloon on your sweater,
Speaker 3: and electrons are jumping from that balloon onto your sweater.
Speaker 3: And now there are two different charges going on. Because
Speaker 3: you're overcharged, the balloon is now undercharged, and because opposite
Speaker 3: it charges a tract it sticks to your sweater, right,
Speaker 3: And that's static electricity.
Speaker 1: And static you know, you have static and dynamic, and
Speaker 1: dynamic indicates motion. Static indicates staying still, and they use
Speaker 1: that to describe this type of electricity because the electrons
Speaker 1: don't flow, they just sit there and wait for a connection.
Speaker 1: Like when you touch something that's charged, like a door
Speaker 1: knob after you've shuffled with your feet in socks over carpet.
Speaker 1: When you touch that door knob, you're forming that connection,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the balance is achieved once more,
Speaker 1: and the electrons flow.
Speaker 2: Like you're literally a conductor of electricity in that moment.
Speaker 1: So with current electricity, those electrons move, they move along
Speaker 1: a conductive material, say like copper wire or something like that.
Speaker 2: That's a hot one.
Speaker 1: Right. So let's talk about how you produce an electrical current, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about generators and turbines and all that awesome stuff.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you need to generate that electricity with
Speaker 3: a generator, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's what generators are called. That's why they're
Speaker 1: called there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny just how basic some of these things are.
Speaker 3: Like you say, a compu tour.
Speaker 1: Right, but but you just you've heard it so many
Speaker 1: times you take it for granted and this is its meaning,
Speaker 1: and it's like looking at a word too frequently.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think a lot of these words
Speaker 3: are like that, like a generator or a core puzzle
Speaker 3: or a what's it called when he stop down the electricity,
Speaker 3: which we'll get to transformer? Yeah, it transforms something. But
Speaker 3: you say them so much, you're like, what's a transformer do?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, I've been reading too much science for dummies,
Speaker 3: I think. All right, so generators, well, I guess it
Speaker 3: all comes down to magnetism.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the case of generators.
Speaker 3: And if you want to listen to two shows Lightning
Speaker 3: and Magnetism before this one, it might help you understand
Speaker 3: electricity a little.
Speaker 1: Bit more, all right, So just go listen to those,
Speaker 1: well to do that right now, wait two hours. So
Speaker 1: what I think Faraday figured out was that because of
Speaker 1: this relationship between a magnet and electricity, you can take
Speaker 1: a magnet and you can move electrons in a say,
Speaker 1: conductive material. You can knock the electrons loose basically using
Speaker 1: a magnet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like what happens when you attract a paper
Speaker 3: clip to a magnet. It's just the transfer of electrons
Speaker 3: jumping around.
Speaker 1: And you create a flow by flipping the polarity. And
Speaker 1: you can do this by rotating metal right, Yeah, say
Speaker 1: like a coiled copper within the two poles of a
Speaker 1: large magnet. And when you do this, you're reversing polarity
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Yeah, and you are knocking the
Speaker 1: electrons loose in those coils. And the way that you
Speaker 1: spin the coils very quickly is by hooking the coils
Speaker 1: to say a shaft. Yeah, we kind of did this backwards.
Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. You want to Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go to Niagara Falls.
Speaker 2: Okay, back in eighteen ninety five George.
Speaker 1: Westinghouse, who is Nikola Tesla's boss, Which, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to another really good podcast,
Speaker 1: go listen to that one, Nikola Tesla one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember it was all about the ac DC war between
Speaker 1: Tesla and Addison. Yeah, good episode, killed shocking animals. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty awful. But in eighteen ninety five, George Westinghouse
Speaker 1: set up a hydro electric power plant along the Niagara Falls.
Speaker 1: And what he did was he had a means of
Speaker 1: taking the movement of water, which is kinetic energy. The
Speaker 1: water at the top of the falls has potential energy,
Speaker 1: and then once it falls over, that potential turns to
Speaker 1: kinetic energy. Well, Westinghouse set up a turbine to catch
Speaker 1: this movement of water, right, which is actual energy, and
Speaker 1: have that movement spin a turbine, a propeller or a fan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the same concept as an old gristmill, except
Speaker 3: it's not creating energy. It's just moving the stones that
Speaker 3: grind the wheat or corn.
Speaker 1: Right, the gristmill is in this case it's capturing that
Speaker 1: energy by or it's transferring it, we should say, by
Speaker 1: converting that kinetic energy from the water into mechanical energy
Speaker 1: spinning the turbine. The turbine is connected to that shaft
Speaker 1: I was talking about where we suddenly change course. And
Speaker 1: at the end of that shaft, which is now spinning
Speaker 1: thanks to the turbine, thanks to the movement of the water,
Speaker 1: is some coiled copper and that coiled copper is spinning
Speaker 1: within those two magnets. Yeah, that's the key, right, And
Speaker 1: because of that, the electrons are being knocked loose. You
Speaker 1: have a power line leading from the coiled copper out
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have an electric current.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And if you've ever been to the Hoover Dam or something,
Speaker 3: you don't have to have a waterfall or a river
Speaker 3: to make this thing work. That's why they build dams.
Speaker 3: You stop up the water and then at the base
Speaker 3: of the dam you have the means to release that
Speaker 3: water and then it becomes that flowing water.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And then also for thermal power plants, they use nuclear
Speaker 1: power to create a nuclear reaction to produce heat, or
Speaker 1: they burn coal to produce heat, and then they use
Speaker 1: that heat to heat water, and then they use that
Speaker 1: water to create steam, and then that steam turns a turbine.
Speaker 3: And these are all just different methods, whether it's solar
Speaker 3: or steam or nuclear. I almost set it, which is
Speaker 3: weird because I definitely don't say it that way.
Speaker 1: Well, you were very excited.
Speaker 3: I think I said it enough as a joke that
Speaker 3: it slips in. But anyway, all those are just means
Speaker 3: to turn that turbine, right.
Speaker 1: And all it is is you're using that stored energy, yeah,
Speaker 1: or that kinetic energy like over here to create electricity
Speaker 1: so that you can transfer it into you work down
Speaker 1: the line.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: It's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And this article we used a few different articles for
Speaker 3: this one, like we said, including some science for kids websites,
Speaker 3: which by the way, I highly recommend.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you don't get something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great place to go. Visit are these
Speaker 3: kids websites because they break it down like super simply.
Speaker 2: But in our article, it.
Speaker 3: Describes a generator as if it was a water and
Speaker 3: a pump, which made a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 3: The generator is the pump, but instead of pushing water
Speaker 3: through a pipe, it's pushing electrons down a line power line.
Speaker 1: And that whole like using water as an analogy for
Speaker 1: electricity fits very well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you need something to push it. It's not
Speaker 3: a self pusher, so you need that force, and that
Speaker 3: force is voltage, right, Yeah, it's electromotive force.
Speaker 1: It's the same with water, like you have water pressure
Speaker 1: that forces the water on the line, right, And with
Speaker 1: electricity you have a force that moves electricity and it's voltage,
Speaker 1: like you said, measured in volts. Yeah, and the electrical
Speaker 1: current is measured in amps. And the amps represent the
Speaker 1: total number of electrons flowing through any one point of
Speaker 1: a circuit in any every second, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 3: And if you have voltage and you add that to current,
Speaker 3: which is amps, you get power, which is watts.
Speaker 1: Right, and I think it's multiplied by it. Oh really,
Speaker 1: yeah it is.
Speaker 2: Okay. I wasn't even thinking of it as a math formula.
Speaker 1: But it is. It is a math formula. And the
Speaker 1: reason why it's a math formula is because they're related,
Speaker 1: Like you can flip flop them, you can adjust them.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole basis of industrial power transmission that
Speaker 1: which we'll get to later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know it sounds a little confusing with
Speaker 3: the volts, amps, and watts, but there are different Like
Speaker 3: if you said, you know that guy was shocked and
Speaker 3: he had one hundred and twenty volts coursing through his body,
Speaker 3: that's not true at all, because the vault is the
Speaker 3: force he's got.
Speaker 2: He's got amps coursing through his body. Yeah, but you'd
Speaker 2: be a huge geek to point that out to someone.
Speaker 1: Someone said that, And a good rule of thumb is
Speaker 1: the higher the vaults, the more dangerous the shock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is why in America most outlets and homes are
Speaker 1: two or one hundred and twenty volts, where if you
Speaker 1: touch it, you're gonna feel it, but it's probably not
Speaker 1: going to kill you.
Speaker 3: In the United States it's one twenty. But it's different
Speaker 3: in other countries.
Speaker 1: Right, which is why like European appliance can't be plugged
Speaker 1: into an American appliance because.
Speaker 2: You got to get those adapters.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you were talking about current, which is the
Speaker 1: number of electrons flowing through a circuit. You have the volts,
Speaker 1: which is the force or pressure that's pushing them down
Speaker 1: the line, and then you have those two multiplied by
Speaker 1: one another to create watts, which is power.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You also there's one there's another factor to electrical currents,
Speaker 1: and that is resistance.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we didn't talk about that, so we acted
Speaker 3: like it was all either an insulator or conductor.
Speaker 1: But you can be a resistor, well, I mean everything,
Speaker 1: Everything has a certain level of resistance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you're an official resistor, that means current moves,
Speaker 3: it just doesn't move like as fast as it might
Speaker 3: end metal, right or not.
Speaker 2: At all as in wood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or glass is another good resistor insulator yeah, and
Speaker 1: so is rubber. Yes, but even something is like conductive
Speaker 1: as copper wire has a certain amount of resistance. And
Speaker 1: again that water flowing analogy comes into place. Like if
Speaker 1: you pump like some water really really hard, Yes, try
Speaker 1: to get a lot of water through a very small pipe,
Speaker 1: it's still not going to come out very high, very
Speaker 1: fast because you're trying to force too much water through
Speaker 1: that little pipe. So in the exact same way, a
Speaker 1: thin wire where you're trying to push a lot of
Speaker 1: amps through and a lot of volts through, it's going
Speaker 1: to resist. And when you have resistance in an electrical circuit,
Speaker 1: you have what you lose some of those electrons that
Speaker 1: are flowing in the form of heat, which is produced
Speaker 1: by electrons bumping up against other atoms that aren't sharing
Speaker 1: their electrons, and that's the result of friction.
Speaker 3: And resistance is measured in ohms ohm. Should we talk
Speaker 3: about circuits?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Are we there?
Speaker 1: I think so.
Speaker 2: So all this is well and good.
Speaker 3: That's you know, you can supply power and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about this more in detail to homes from a power plant,
Speaker 3: but you can also have a little battery supplying that
Speaker 3: electrical energy to a iPhone, let's say, right, And in
Speaker 3: that case you need something called a circuit, which is
Speaker 3: basically just a closed loop that allows the electrons to travel.
Speaker 3: And in most electronics it's like like you said, like
Speaker 3: copper wire maybe, and it travels from you know, there's
Speaker 3: a switch that turns it on and off, which is
Speaker 3: why a.
Speaker 2: Circuit is called a circuit breaker.
Speaker 3: Like if you break that circuit by turning the switch off,
Speaker 3: or if the wire like snaps or something, it's gonna
Speaker 3: no more electrons are going to be flowing.
Speaker 1: Right, because there's and the reason they're not going to
Speaker 1: be flowing any longer is because the positive pole and
Speaker 1: the negative pole from that circuit are no longer connected,
Speaker 1: that's right. Another way to look at voltage is that
Speaker 1: it is the difference between electrons on one side and
Speaker 1: electrons on another side of a circuit. And remember we
Speaker 1: talked about nature always wanting balance. Yeah, electrons flow from
Speaker 1: negative to positive, right, that's right. And as they flow,
Speaker 1: the reason they're flowing, the whole reason they're moving at
Speaker 1: all is because there are not as many electrons on
Speaker 1: the positive side as there are on the negative side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they want to leave the negative side to go
Speaker 1: achieve balance on the positive side and ultimately make whatever
Speaker 1: circuit it's traveling neutral.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You stick something in that circuit and as those electrons
Speaker 1: are moving from the negative side to the positive side,
Speaker 1: because again, electricity is just the flow of electrons, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can convert that movement into productive work. Yeah, mechanical energy, right,
Speaker 1: And anything you attach onto a circuit to exploit that
Speaker 1: flow of electrons for work is called the load.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It could be a light bulb or you know whatever.
Speaker 3: Whatever mechanical energy you're trying to create is your load.
Speaker 1: Right, And there's all sorts of things you can do
Speaker 1: by attaching a load to a circuit. Like a light bulb.
Speaker 1: A light bulb basically uses that electricity flow to flow
Speaker 1: into a resistant filament, very thin wire that purposely resists
Speaker 1: that flow of electricity, generating heat and in turn heating
Speaker 1: up to produce light. That's how light bulb works.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can also recharge batteries which go in and force
Speaker 1: electrons back into the negative position so that the batteries
Speaker 1: recharged and those electrons are ready to flow again once
Speaker 1: you connect the circuit. There's also appliances that use resistors
Speaker 1: to produce heat, like hair dryer or a toaster. There's
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff you can do to connect into
Speaker 1: the circuit, but it's all the same whether it's a
Speaker 1: battery or a toaster or a whole house. If you
Speaker 1: want to look at it that way, it's you're plugging
Speaker 1: a load onto an electrical circuit and exploiting the flow
Speaker 1: of electrons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I kind of misspoke a minute ago when
Speaker 3: I said it's creating the mechanical energy.
Speaker 2: You need a motor to actually do that.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, if you have an electric drill, that's great
Speaker 3: that you have electrons flowing, but it's not going to
Speaker 3: turn anything unless you have that motor, and electric motor
Speaker 3: is basically just a cylinder stuffed with magnets around the edge.
Speaker 3: And if you've ever used an electric drill and you
Speaker 3: fire it up, when you look and see in the vents,
Speaker 3: you can actually see sparks.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It's very cool.
Speaker 1: It's like those little guns you used to get at
Speaker 1: the circus when you're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, god, I love those.
Speaker 3: So it's packed with those magnets around the edge, and
Speaker 3: in the middle, you've got your core, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: like an iron wire and it's wrapped around you know,
Speaker 3: the coppers wrapped around the edges. So electricity flows to
Speaker 3: that core, creates magnetism, and then that pushes against the
Speaker 3: outer cylinder and makes that motor spin around, and then
Speaker 3: that's where you get your mechanical energy.
Speaker 1: Right, And an electric motor is probably the best example
Speaker 1: of how you're converting energy from one form to another, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then reconverting it because an electric motor is basically
Speaker 1: a generator in reverse. And so you use that mechanical
Speaker 1: energy the spinning of the turbine down the line and
Speaker 1: convert it in your electric drill back into mechanical energy
Speaker 1: to spin the drill and in between, is that flow
Speaker 1: of electrons that's causing the whole thing, or that's carrying
Speaker 1: that energy from point A to point B. There's one
Speaker 1: other thing if you look at a plug that you're
Speaker 1: plugging an appliance into, because again you're just attaching a
Speaker 1: load to that flow of electrons and diverting it through
Speaker 1: your appliance and then it goes back on its merry way. Right.
Speaker 1: If you look at a plug, sometimes you'll see three prongs,
Speaker 1: and the third prong, the one on the bottom, seems
Speaker 1: different from the other ones, that's round, and that is
Speaker 1: actually a grounding wire.
Speaker 2: Very important, very.
Speaker 1: Very important, because as awesome as we've gotten with producing
Speaker 1: and directing electricity, we can't control the amount of electrons
Speaker 1: that flow through an outlet to down to a single electron,
Speaker 1: and so there's such a thing as leakage of electrons,
Speaker 1: which is crazy. And there's also electrical build up that
Speaker 1: can happen where if you're not using all of the
Speaker 1: amps through an appliance, the residual amps can build up
Speaker 1: and they charge the appliance. And again, as with static electricity,
Speaker 1: a charge is just sitting there waiting to be neutralized,
Speaker 1: sometimes through you, which can make it very dangerous. To
Speaker 1: prevent this, they have they connect the appliance through either
Speaker 1: that third prong and a plug or through an actual
Speaker 1: grounding wire to a copper wire that's driven into the ground.
Speaker 1: And that's where the word comes from ground actually transferring
Speaker 1: that residual electric energy to the ground, which is basically
Speaker 1: an infinite reservoir for a charge dispersal to earth. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like when you look at a power line and
Speaker 3: you see that bare wire coming down from the power
Speaker 3: line and driven into the ground by a stake that
Speaker 3: is the ground, and it goes down like six or
Speaker 3: ten feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Or if you look at every house, you're going to
Speaker 3: see near the meter, the electrical meter, you're going to.
Speaker 2: See a probably a copper rod driven into the ground,
Speaker 2: and that's your house is ground.
Speaker 1: Exactly same thing with a lightning rod. It's a ground
Speaker 1: for your entire house, so that the lightning doesn't go
Speaker 1: through your house, it goes through the lightning rod. And
Speaker 1: the point of all of those is that the earth
Speaker 1: is it can take it. Go ahead, give it as
Speaker 1: many electrical shocks as you want. It's gonna be fine,
Speaker 1: so we think, and it's a very good it's very
Speaker 1: good at just dispersing those charges. So that's what grounding
Speaker 1: comes from. Very important stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we mentioned transformers earlier. Power plants create massive amounts
Speaker 3: of electricity and you can't just shoot that down a
Speaker 3: power line and straight into a house because it will
Speaker 3: blow up everything in your in your home immediately. But
Speaker 3: they do need that kind of juice in order to
Speaker 3: transfer like hundreds of miles away from the power plant.
Speaker 3: You know, if you don't live close, it's still got
Speaker 3: to get to you. So the way they do that
Speaker 3: is through transformers. They transmit the power with a lot
Speaker 3: of voltage, so more force, less amperage.
Speaker 1: Less resistance, less resistance, which means you lose less.
Speaker 3: And then once it you know, they stop it down
Speaker 3: along the way and by the time it gets to
Speaker 3: your home, it's transformed down to here in the United
Speaker 3: States one hundred and twenty volts.
Speaker 1: More elsewhere, nice and safe, right, And then you just
Speaker 1: plug your appliance into it and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: that electrical energy transmits to your toast strude old being warmed.
Speaker 2: In your hot pocket with tainted meats.
Speaker 1: Wow, did you hear about that? Yeah? Remember that whole
Speaker 1: horse meat thing with Ikea the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just Ikea, but yeah, they were definitely called out,
Speaker 1: maybe most strongly for.
Speaker 2: I think the hot pockets too.
Speaker 3: They called it unsound meat, which is just a word
Speaker 3: that sounds weird.
Speaker 2: In front of meat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unsound is not you don't want to go near it, unsound, unclean.
Speaker 1: It's biblical, all right.
Speaker 3: So now I think we, even though we've covered it
Speaker 3: in the Tesla podcast, we do need to go over
Speaker 3: ac DC a little.
Speaker 1: Bit to go listen to that podcast. That's a great one,
Speaker 1: best episode, best Australian band of all time. Are they
Speaker 1: were good?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, are good?
Speaker 1: David? Are they still around? Yeah? Man, David Bowie played
Speaker 1: pretty mean Tesla.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not talking about test him home at ac DC.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, uh yeah, Tesla's all.
Speaker 2: Right, sure, and they're not around.
Speaker 1: That's why I was really confused. So I was more
Speaker 1: confused about that than I was by any aspect of electricity.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, man, of course they're around anyone Australian.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, No, ac DC is great and they're still around.
Speaker 3: Huh yeah they're I think they're putting an album together
Speaker 3: right now, give them form them.
Speaker 1: I'll bet it sounds exactly like all the rest. It's
Speaker 1: still rocks blues based rock uh in valure or velvet.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So there was a battle being waged between Tesla and Edison,
Speaker 3: and Tesla was all about the ac current alternating current. Edison,
Speaker 3: as we know, said no, no, no, that's far too dangerous,
Speaker 3: and I'll prove this to you by electrocuting animals and
Speaker 3: dogs and cats and even an elephant named Topsy.
Speaker 1: And he was alleged to have helped botch the first
Speaker 1: electric cution by electric chair by a state. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't remember the details of that, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: in our episode.
Speaker 2: On Exploded the guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a real jerk.
Speaker 2: Remember, Yeah, and I think we remember. I remember talking
Speaker 2: about there should be a movie too about that that battle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe there's not.
Speaker 2: It sounds super nerdy, but it would actually be interesting.
Speaker 1: It go over well these days, agreed.
Speaker 3: So batteries these days use direct current power DC power,
Speaker 3: and that means the positive and negative terminals are always
Speaker 3: positive and negative, and it always electricity always flows in
Speaker 3: the same.
Speaker 1: Direction from negative to positive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does not alternate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just think about it. This way negative and electrons negative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in any terminal, that's where all the negative charges
Speaker 1: bad vibes, and then positive is where the electrons want
Speaker 1: to be because they're seeking to balance it out and
Speaker 1: create neutral so that there's no poll good vibes, yeah,
Speaker 1: or the very least so so vibes, yeah, true, but
Speaker 1: not negative vibes.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: And then you have alternating current or AC, which means
Speaker 3: the current reverses sixty times per second here in the US,
Speaker 3: fifty times per second in Europe. So it's just reversing
Speaker 3: back and forth, alternating that current. And I guess, so
Speaker 3: who went out in the end Tesla on a large scale.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean that's what our generation does.
Speaker 2: Yeh. Edison has his batteries. I guess he could throw
Speaker 2: it to.
Speaker 1: Which are pretty important too. But yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: kind of came out in the same way on that episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like this one, they both kind of won. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: Tesla was the cooler dude. Although Tesla died penniless in
Speaker 1: New York in the nineteen forties. Oh yeah, and Edison
Speaker 1: died of rich fat guy.
Speaker 2: He died of consumption and gout.
Speaker 3: That has Ben Franklin I guess we can finish with.
Speaker 3: If you get your power bill and you're amazed and
Speaker 3: you wonder how they calculate this stuff, it's pretty easy.
Speaker 3: Like we said here in the US, we deliver electricity
Speaker 3: into your home at one hundred and twenty volts, So
Speaker 3: you got to remember that one too.
Speaker 2: It's important.
Speaker 3: Our article uses a space heater as an example, which
Speaker 3: I think is pretty good. You plug in that space heater,
Speaker 3: let's say it's the only thing going in your house,
Speaker 3: which is not realistic, but go with me. You plug
Speaker 3: in the space heater and it comes out to ten amps.
Speaker 3: So you multiply that ten times one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: because that's your voltage, and you have got twelve hundred
Speaker 3: watts of heat.
Speaker 1: Or one point two kill a watts.
Speaker 3: Yes, because that's how the power company is going to
Speaker 3: measure it, right, because they deal in big chunks.
Speaker 1: And if you leave that heater on for an hour,
Speaker 1: you've just used one point two kill a wat hours,
Speaker 1: which is how you're build.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if they charge you a dime per kill
Speaker 3: a what hour? It's going to cost you twelve cents
Speaker 3: an hour to run that space heater?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Pretty simple? Yeap and neat.
Speaker 3: And that's why when you go to buy an appliance
Speaker 3: you should look at that little tag that says how
Speaker 3: many KILLO what hours you're going to be burning?
Speaker 1: That's right, the lower the better, So electricity. Huh You
Speaker 1: got anything else?
Speaker 2: No, don't play around with it?
Speaker 1: No, don't. Uh. Yes, I always wear rubber sold.
Speaker 2: Huice because rubber is an insulator.
Speaker 1: It is why because it hangs on to its electron.
Speaker 1: That's right, the atoms that make up rubber.
Speaker 2: It's just that simple.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about electricity, you can
Speaker 1: type that word in the search bart HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also go on all sorts of kids science
Speaker 1: sites and find out more about it too. And since
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this rare birthday shout out.
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, my name is Pearl, and I just want
Speaker 3: to tell you how much a fan I am of
Speaker 3: your show. I was introduced to the podcast by my
Speaker 3: best friend Molly. We've been best friends for twelve years,
Speaker 3: and many of our conversations begin by commenting on the podcast.
Speaker 3: For example, we could not stop laughing at your nineteen
Speaker 3: twenties voice toward the end of the Underground Tunnels episode,
Speaker 3: we laughed over and over.
Speaker 1: That is a good voice.
Speaker 2: I think she's talking about this one. See that one. Yeah, Electricity,
Speaker 2: Tesla Edison killing animals. All right, that was for you,
Speaker 2: Molly and Pearl.
Speaker 3: Whenever we're in the car together, we find a podcast
Speaker 3: of yours to listen to so we can enjoy it together.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if you could help her out. Molly's
Speaker 3: twenty sixth birthday is April ninth. I think it would
Speaker 3: be totally awesome birthday gift if you would send her
Speaker 3: a shout out during listener mail, I would be forever
Speaker 3: in your debt.
Speaker 2: Thanks for doing the podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm a middle school teacher who always listens during my
Speaker 3: prep periods and so happy birthday Molly.
Speaker 2: Happy twenty six This should be close.
Speaker 1: Yeah, happy birthday to April ninth. That was very nice
Speaker 1: of us, Chuck.
Speaker 3: And thank you Pearl Web in Chicago, and your friendship
Speaker 3: means a lot to us.
Speaker 1: You know, your friendship with one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then conversely threw us all together in their car.
Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah, Well, if you want to get some sort
Speaker 1: of shout out sometimes Chuck Danes too, He's very nice.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.