Vocabulary | flow | power | current | measure | electricity's origin | diagram | time | resistance | summary | lesson
Energy is derived from the Greek word for work.
Energy became an important concept as natural philosophers began to measure heat, light, electricity, and magnetism during the 17th century in Europe based on Arabic manuscripts that had become available in the Renaissance .
"The greatest need modern civilizations have is energy. "
Vocabulary | flow | power | current | measure | electricity's origin | diagram | time | resistance | summary | lesson
What do these terms really mean?
Peak power Power --or electrical current-- generated by a utility referring to a unit that operates at a very low capacity factor; the highest output or capacity is generally used to meet short-lived and variable high demand periods. |
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Utility-interactive A power system which interacts with the utility grid (mains), taking power from the grid to satisfy its load -- or the aggregate demands of all customers-- as necessary, and returning power to the grid when not required by the loads. |
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Electrical generating facility uses water turned into steam by burning coal, with a cooling tower to restore the ambient temperature to the hot water. Electricity and water are the two gemini, Gameli, or Bobsie twins of modern industrial energy because you cannot have one without the other. Water is heated into steam, hot steam turns a turbine that drives a rotating electromagnet in a changing magnetic field. This process induces a current of electrons from the field and disperses the electrons along a conductor or wire. |
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"Increasing the voltage will make more current flow."
Measured in volts (V), the electrical potential between two points. One volt of potential causes one ampere of current to flow through a resistance of one ohm. The open-circuit voltage of a silicon solar cell is about half a volt; the operating voltage of a lead-acid cell (of a battery) is about two volts.
Volts, force (mass times velocity squared) of potential power; the pressure available due to the volume of electrical potential, volt ( V )
the current is equal to the voltage divided by the resistance.
I = V/r
Ampere, flow, or rate of movement of the electrical charge; measured as the electrical current equal to a flow of one coulomb per second. Amp ( I )
Coulomb, charge, electric charge, equal to the quantity of electricity conveyed in one second by a current of one ampere.
Erg is a unit of work or energy, equal to the work done by a force of one dyne when its point of application moves one centimeter in the direction of action of the force.
Force, the strength of an effect in any action on objects; the push or the pull-- hence the repulsion from or the attraction to one object by another.
Watts, the rate of the draw, or excrescences of energy, hence a measure of power or capability; power produced or consumed or the rate at which force is used to do work; measured as equal to one Joule [J] per second.
The human being can produce about 100 watts of power, on average when exerting movement in say walking or deep knee bends.
Electrical power is measured in watts. In an electrical system power (P) is equal to the voltage multiplied by the current. P = VI.
kilowatts, one thousand watts; 1000w or the measure of power equal to ten human bodies.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question501.htm/image
Hertz, frequency of the oscillation; equal to one cycle per second.
Ohm, resistance or friction; measured as the resistance in a circuit transmitting a current of one ampere when subjected to a potential difference of one volt. (Symbol: Ω)
ORIGIN late Middle English : from medieval Latin secunda (minuta) ‘second (minute),’ feminine (used as a noun) of secundus, referring to the “second” operation of dividing an hour by sixty.
Energy is matter in motion. In any real sense energy is the measure of movement; the change in the state of something over time with respect to the motion of its molecules, or its position with respect to some background is how energy is measured,
Some say energy is the ability to do work, but that suggests the power to overcome a force, in our case the force of gravity. We exert energy to overcome the forces or gravity or wind, or a magnet pulling metal objects away from our grasp.
Energy = En + Erg inherent activity or the ability to move and a capacity for such movement, That is why energy is said to exist in two forms. Those forms are potential (inherent ability) and kinetic (actual expression of the capacity). The origin of the word is from the mid 16th century (denoting force or vigor of expression): from French énergie, or via late Latin from Greek energeia, from en- ‘in, within’ + ergon ‘work’.
Energy is elusive in the sense that some people call it stuff, the very stuff Einstein said was equivalent to any mass moving at the speed of light squared. Work, even "work within" seems a very far removed concept from the idea of matter moving at 186,000 miles per second.
Intangible as it may seem in definitions, energy is essential to all movement unintentional or intentional and energy is --in abstraction-- something that can never be created or destroyed. It is as the first law of thermodynamics suggests: always conserved [Law of mass-energy conservation].
Richard Wolfson, Energy, Environment, and Climate. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. pp. 1-3, 22-37.
Electricity
This is a force that arises from the atomic spaces that we cannot see, yet we --of course we experience-- and what exactly electromagnetism is eluded scientists for years until Michael Faraday and others such as his mentor Humphry Davey, began to unravel the mysterious power of a substance that flows like, but differently from water and carries with it a magnetic field of attraction such that some authorities suggest that the electron is accompanied by a magnetic filed--or force area around which like charged particles are deflected.
"What are amps, watts, volts and ohms?." 31 October 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/question501.htm> 21 May 2008..
go to How stuff works, web site .
Duration & frequency are related
Time is a critical element in understanding electricity. Without an instrument that could reliably record seconds, the capacity to comprehend electrical charge would be impeded..
Humphry Davy's reputation was made by his book Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, chiefly concerning Nitrous Oxide . . . and its Respiration (1799).
His recommendation that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) be employed as an anesthetic in minor surgical operations was ignored, but breathing it became the highlight of contemporary social gatherings. In 1801 Davy was appointed—first as a lecturer, then as a professor of chemistry—to the Royal Institution in London, which he molded into a center for advanced research and for polished demonstration lectures delivered to audiences largely made up of fashionable gentlemen and ladies.
Among his many accomplishments, Davy discovered several new elements. In 1807 he electrolyzed slightly damp fused potash and then soda—substances that had previously resisted decomposition and hence were thought by some to be elements—and isolated potassium and sodium. He went on to analyze the alkaline earths, isolating magnesium, calcium, strontium, and barium. Davy's recognition that the alkalis and alkaline earths were all oxides challenged Lavoisier's theory that oxygen was the principle of acidity. Later, Davy determined that not all acids contain oxygen—including muriatic acid (our hydrochloric acid), which, as Davy discovered, was not "oxymuriatic acid," as Lavoisier thought. It contained only hydrogen and one other element—chlorine..
Davy had an assistant, Michael Faraday:
Michael Faraday, the discoverer of electro-magnetic induction, electro-magnetic rotations, the magneto-optical effect, diamagnetism, field theory and much else besides, was born in Newington Butts (the area of London now known as the Elephant and Castle) on 22 September 1791.
Nearly ten years to the day after his discovery of electro-magnetic rotations that Faraday was able to resume his work on electro-magnetism, when he discovered on 29 August 1831, electro-magnetic induction. This is the principle behind the electric transformer and generator. It was this discovery, more than any other, that allowed electricity to be turned, during the nineteenth century, from a scientific curiosity into a powerful technology.
During the remainder of the 1830s Faraday worked on developing his ideas on electricity. He enunciated a new theory of electro-chemical action between 1832 and 1834 one of the results of which was that he coined, with William Whewell, many of the words now so familiar - electrode, electrolyte, anode, cathode and ion to name but five. In the later half of the 1830s Faraday worked on a new theory of static electricity and electrical induction. This work led him to reject the traditional theory that electricity was an imponderable fluid or fluids. Instead he proposed that electricity was a form of force that passed from particle to particle of matter.
Lesson
Electricity is an elusive, yet very real substance that is also insubstantial with respect to bodies such as ours. That is because we generate electricity as well as conduct electrical current. As Whitman suggested we are the body electric, in that each of us is as it were a candle (light) burning with 100 watts in the electromagnetic wind.
The earth so huge and the electron so humble are both electromagnets as if electricity were everwhere or at least imbued in all things.
The devils in the wave's details.
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