What is Electricity?
The Electricity is a form of energy and it has high importance in our daily lives. With electricity we are capable to cook food, turn on TV and computers, lighten up homes and roads, and use batteries to drive cars and many other electrical devices are used by us for daily convenience. One can observe easily the usage of electricity when one passes from home to school and counts the electrical devices, machines and engines that come in the way. This will clear that how much electricity is important to us and how we depend on it.
What is an atom?
After observing the utility, obviously one thinks of where electricity comes from? How does it perform? And what actually it is? But before these questions, let us first learn about the atom and its structure.
Everything is composed of atoms. Atoms are made up of small particles; the three main particles are namely electron, proton and neutron. The electron revolves round the centre of the atom, where as the proton and neutron are present in the centre ‘nucleus’ of the atom. These particles have a charge on them. The electron has negative charge; proton has the positive and the neutron has neutral charge that is neither positive nor negative. Atoms are of different types and that atom is one essential part in making an element. Since the atoms make element, every element has different numbers of atoms in it. Apart from the number of atoms that an element consists, a single atom has specific number of protons, neutrons and electrons. Usually the number of protons and the number of electrons are same and if they are same, the atom is said to balanced and is very stable. Take an example of Carbon; it has six electrons as well as six protons. Carbon is found in sun, stars, space, and food. Coal is made up of carbon and so is diamond.
Among atoms, some of the atoms have the characteristic that the electrons are droopily attached. The kind of atom that gives off the electron has more amount of proton than electron and is positively charged whereas the atom that has the tendency to attract electron has more amount of electron than protons and is negatively charged. A charged atom is defined as ‘ion’. Electrons can possibly move from one atom to another. When this motion takes place, electricity is passed. The movement of electrons from an atom to other occurs in a flow, in this state an atom looses an electron and the other gains it. We can simply put this process in the example of fire fighters in old times. Starting up with the first person in line to pass the bucket of water, it proceeds and at the end it uses to control the fire. Same is the condition with the atoms, the electron keeps passing and the electricity is maintained. As long as the electrons are in motion, the electricity keeps passing.
The above situation can also be described in simple words that all atoms wants to be in a balance state. An atom which is unbalanced will search for a free electron to make its vacant position fill. This atom is said as positive charged, as it has more number of protons in it. On the other hand, the electron that looks for an unbalanced atom to make it complete is said to be negatively charged, since there is no proton to make it balanced.
The relation of electricity with the positive charge (+) and negative charge (-):
In the developing ages, the scientists and engineers have found abundant methods to create positive atoms and free negative electrons. Since the positive atoms and free negative electrons are oppositely charged, they have a strong attraction for each other. The positive atom will attract the negative free electron to make its atom balance and the electron will also get attracted to find its place in an atom. In this way, both the free negatively electrons and positive atom will attract each other to make themselves in a balanced form. The more the number of positive atoms and negative free electrons, the higher the attraction will take place, thus when the both large groups moves towards each other, the whole attraction is termed as ‘charge’. When the electrons move towards the atoms, the current of electricity is created, like in a wire, when the electrons moves from an atom to another atom it creates the current of electricity.
Electricity is conducted differently among different things. The resistance of a substance measures how well it passes the electricity. Things which hold the electrons tightly, and do not let them move well are called insulators. Electricity doesn’t pass well through insulators; some good examples of insulators are glass, wood, rubber and plastic. Whereas things that hold electrons loosely and allow them move easily are called conductors. Some good conductors of electricity are steel, copper and most of the metals.
History of the term ‘Electricity’:
The term ‘electricity’ came from the Greek language term ‘elektor’ which means beaming sun. The term electricity and related terms like electrical, electrons, and electronic are originally back grounded with this Greek term. The term ‘elecktron’ in Greek language means of Amber.
Amber is a type of colored stone, usually golden brown and it sparks orange yellowish in sunlight. Amber is actually solidified tree sap. It was what used in the movie Jurassic Park. In ancient times, millions of insects were jammed in this sap. Those insects had bitten the dinosaurs and had the DNA of dinosaurs in their bodies which were now solidified in the Amber. Greeks long time ago discovered that Amber have oddly features like that of attracting feathers when rubbed by fur or other objects. In that time they were unable to recognize what caused this to happen. Later the Greeks found this as an example of the phenomenon of Static electricity.
Similarly, the Latin word ‘electricus’ means to ‘produce from amber by friction’. Concluding we get the term electricity from the combination of Greek and Latin words for Amber.
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