How Does Electricity Travels?
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I have always wondered how it travels. One thing I do know is magnets are used but I am not sure. The type of devices I mean are ultility poles that carry electricity from the powerplant to a house usually. So I mostly want to know how it travels on ultility poles.
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This is an interesting question and many aspects of the answer are surprising the first time you hear/read them.
Firstly, nothing really travels through the wires on the poles all the way from the power-plant to your home.
What does move physically is not "electricity" but charged particles, in the case of metal wires on utility poles these are electrons that are not strongly bound to the metal atoms. These are called "free electrons" because they can move around more easily.
The electrons quickly jiggle and bounce around a lot because the metal has a temperature hundreds of degrees above absolute zero. By which I mean normal outdoor temperature.
The power plant applies a strong force to the bouncing electrons which causes them to, on average, very slowly drift in one direction for about 0.02 seconds and then causes them to drift back in the opposite direction for 0.02 seconds. This is called alternating current (AC)
The movement of charge carriers (in this case electrons) is called electric current. We measure electric current in units called Amps. A current of 1 Amp is defined to mean the current from 6,241,000,000,000,000,000 electrons going past every second. However in the case of our AC current, the net number of electrons going past is harder to measure because after one second of drifting back and forth they are mostly back where they started (approximately speaking). So we average the motion out by calculating the root mean square (RMS) current - which makes subsequent arithmetic a little easier.
The force that causes the charge carriers to slowly drift is a force produced by what is called an electric field. We can measure the strength of this field as an electric potential measured in volts (so what is measured is called a voltage).
The upshot is that the power plant converts some form of energy such as chemical energy or gravitational potential energy into electrical energy and the utility poles cause this energy to be made available in your home (but don't think the energy always travels inside the wires - this also is a misconception)
Firstly, nothing really travels through the wires on the poles all the way from the power-plant to your home.
What does move physically is not "electricity" but charged particles, in the case of metal wires on utility poles these are electrons that are not strongly bound to the metal atoms. These are called "free electrons" because they can move around more easily.
The electrons quickly jiggle and bounce around a lot because the metal has a temperature hundreds of degrees above absolute zero. By which I mean normal outdoor temperature.
The power plant applies a strong force to the bouncing electrons which causes them to, on average, very slowly drift in one direction for about 0.02 seconds and then causes them to drift back in the opposite direction for 0.02 seconds. This is called alternating current (AC)
The movement of charge carriers (in this case electrons) is called electric current. We measure electric current in units called Amps. A current of 1 Amp is defined to mean the current from 6,241,000,000,000,000,000 electrons going past every second. However in the case of our AC current, the net number of electrons going past is harder to measure because after one second of drifting back and forth they are mostly back where they started (approximately speaking). So we average the motion out by calculating the root mean square (RMS) current - which makes subsequent arithmetic a little easier.
The force that causes the charge carriers to slowly drift is a force produced by what is called an electric field. We can measure the strength of this field as an electric potential measured in volts (so what is measured is called a voltage).
The upshot is that the power plant converts some form of energy such as chemical energy or gravitational potential energy into electrical energy and the utility poles cause this energy to be made available in your home (but don't think the energy always travels inside the wires - this also is a misconception)
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