What is Electricity
Electricity is a basic part of nature and it is one of our most widely used forms of energy.
Atoms are the building blocks of everything we know. They are so small that to see a material containing millions of them would still need a microscope.
The center of an atom is called the nucleus. It is made up of particles called protons and neutrons.
The nucleus is surrounded by minute particles called electrons that move around.
If we concentrate on just the electrons this is the part of the atom that we can call electricity.
In some materials, electrons are tightly bound to the atoms.(insulating material). This means they dont move very much and they cannot conduct electricity very well.
In other materials like metal some electrons are very loose and move easily. (conductive material) They have electrons that can detach from their atoms and move around the structure of the material. These are called free electrons. The moving electrons transmit electrical energy from one point to another.
Electrons flow through wires, but they never leave, they just move. For this reason you need something called a circuit.
To create an electrical force or movement a generator, alternator or battery is often used relying on magnetism or chemicals to push electrons around. It is not so much pumping the electrons out of the wire though, as simply forcing them all to move along it. So the electrons being pushed out one side of a piece of wire and a new electron follows behind it.
In magnetism, most of the electrons at one end are spinning in one direction. At the other end electrons are spinning in the opposite direction.
This is unlike other materials as usually electrons are in balance spinning 50% either way along the whole structure.
For this reason magnets can be used to make electricity. Moving magnetic fields can pull and push electrons and start moving electrons in a circuit.
A water analogy is often used to help describe how an electrical circuit works. Consider a water pump driving water through a closed loop of piping. The pump never runs out of water (any more than an electrical circuit runs out of electrons) since the water circulated by the pump pushing against the water already in the pipe until it arrives back to the pump.
So now we have this energy moving around wires we can begin to control it and use it for our own advantage
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