;colony/science / Electricity & Electronics
⌁ Electricity & Electronics
Electricity & Electronics
From a rubbed balloon to the motor that moves your world — flow, push, and fields.
Read it your way
Every answer here is written twice. Flip the switch and the page rewrites itself.
Try it now · Plate 22
How does a circuit work?
Push harder, squeeze tighter — watch the electrons answer instantly.
PLATE 22 · OHM'S LAW, MOVING
Voltage (the push) 6.0 V
Resistance (the squeeze) 6 Ω
Current
1.00A
Bulb power
6.0W
Think water: the battery is a pump, the wire is a pipe, the resistor is a
narrow squeeze, and the bulb glows wherever the flow works hard. Push harder
(volts up) and the dots speed up. Squeeze tighter (ohms up) and the whole loop slows —
the dots don't pile up anywhere, because the loop is one continuous flow.
Every question
Electricity & Electronics, answered twice.
Plate 22Open → How does a circuit work? Electricity flows through your gadgets in a loop and comes right back out. What gets used up along the way is the push behind it. Plate 23Open → How do you make a magnet you can switch off? A magnet you can switch off is worth a thousand that you can't — and you can make one from a nail and a wire. Plate 37Open → How does an electric motor work? There are more electric motors than people on Earth, and nearly all of them run on one trick: push, flip, repeat. Plate 72Open → Why do you get static shocks? The shock was building silently for minutes. Every step across the carpet was quietly loading you up — until the doorknob gave it somewhere to go. Plate 73Open → How does a battery work? A flat battery is still packed with electrons. What it has run out of is the chemical reaction that was pushing them. Plate 74Open → Series or parallel — what's the difference? Old Christmas lights had a cruel design: one dud bulb and the whole string went dark, with no clue which one. That is series wiring, and it is exactly why your house isn't wired that way. Plate 109Open → How does a capacitor store charge? A capacitor doesn't hold electricity the way a battery does. It stores charge on two plates that never touch, and its trick is letting go of all of it at once. Plate 110Open → How does a transformer change voltage? A transformer can turn 12 volts into 240, or 240 into 12, with no moving parts and no battery — just two coils of wire that never touch, and a rule about counting loops. Plate 111Open → AC or DC — what's the difference? A battery pushes electrons one way and never lets up. A wall socket pushes them one way, then yanks them back, fifty times a second — and the electrons barely travel at all. Plate 112Open → How does radio carry sound? A voice is far too slow and weak to fly across a city on its own. Radio gives it a piggyback ride on a fast wave — and there are two ways to load it on. Plate 113Open → Why don't birds on power lines get shocked? An 11,000-volt wire would kill you in an instant, yet a sparrow naps on it all afternoon. Voltage alone is harmless; what hurts is current finding a path through you, and the bird offers it none. Plate 156Open → How does an LED make light? An old bulb makes light by getting hot. An LED makes light from electrons taking a single quantum step down — each one paying for its drop with one packet of light, in a colour the material chooses. Plate 160Open → How does a touchscreen know where your finger is? Under the glass sits a transparent grid of wires holding tiny charges. Your finger is slightly conductive, so it steals a little charge from the nearest crossings. The screen finds the biggest dip and reads off your finger's position.
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