What is Electricity?.. How can we use it?.. Is it dangerous?.. How is it made?..
What is electricity
In short, electricity is the flow of electrical current. This does not explain much though, does it? Just raises more questions, like: What is this electrical current? Why does this current flow? Which direction does it flow? Where can it flow?
To understand what electricity is, you need to know how matter is made. All matter is made of atoms - a tiny, little particles. Well, not exactly particles, because atoms themselves are made of even smaller particles: neutrons, protons (these two live at the centre of an atom and form its centre - or nucleus) and electrons - that fly around the nucleus. It's easier to understand if you look at the following picture of an atom:
Why do electrons fly around the nucleus and do not wander away from it? This is because they are held by the protons. As you already know, protons have positive charge and electrons have negative charge. Opposite charges attract each other and are trying to pull each other. That's why electrons do not fly away from nucleus and keep on flying around it.
Now that we know how matter is made, how does this help us understand the electricity?
Any matter contains billions of atoms sitting next to each other (see the picture below). We already know that positive proton is holding negative electron, but what if we try to pull electron with something that is more "positive" than proton? Yes! We'll take the electron away from the atom. Once the electron is taken away, there is a free space for one to jump in (all atoms must have same number of electrons).
So when we apply force stronger than the proton uses to hold its electrons, the electrons starts "jumping" from one atom to another to the direction of the positive force:
Try imagining that when electron jumps to another atom it leaves a "hole" in it "home" atom. When another atom jumps in into this "hole" the "hole" will move to the previous atom and so on. So if the electrons are moving (in the picture) from left to right, the "holes" are moving from right to left, or from "+" sign to "-". This movement of "holes" is what we all call "electrical current".
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