Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as always, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, very subdued. It's a cloudy day outside where we are at the moment that we're recording this, and I think we're both sort of mellow today. Yeah, well step it up. Also, blood loss has affected me someone the shaving incident. Yes, we we won't go into detail. We'll just the incident is good enough. The surgeons hope to reattach his scalp. Anyway, Yeah, I took just a little off the top. Nice, Okay, So I'm a I actually am feeling charged up about our podcast this afternoon. I found it shocking. You know, we're gonna do that all all podcasts that people right and complain about our overpunnings as well, they should really frankly, yes, yes, frankly, so it's a pun that no one's gonna get yet. Um, so we are tackling electronics and basic electronics. But in order to talk about electronics, you can't. You can't really just leap into it because it really makes absolutely no sense unless you have and here's another pun a grounding and electrical theory. Yes, I can't. I didn't even mean to do that. And as I was saying, and I just so, do you want to start small? Yeah, let's um, let's start electricity. Start small. Yeah, we're electricity all has to do with the movements of a particular subatomic particle that would be the electron. Right, do you see a pattern here with electricity, electron onyx electrons? Yes, yes, I do, not to be negative or anything. Alright, So see the the nucleus of an atom is made up of protons and neutrons, and you know, revolving around that are the electrons in those outer shells, although revolving is probably uh not terribly accurate, zipping around. Okay, we'll go with that, zipping around because they're not necessarily any circular, right, They're actually pretty erratic and and funky. The more we know about electronics, or sorry, not electronics, but the more we know about atomic behavior, the more bizarre, it appears to me. It seems like as we as we get gain more information, it becomes harder and harder for me to get a grip on it. But in general, yes, the electrons are the negatively charged particles that orbit around the nucleus of an atom and some you know, it all depends on what what kind of material you're talking about. I mean, different materials have different number of electrons orbiting them. Um. Some of have what we often call free electrons and some do not. You can tell the ones that do because they have a sign outside the sets free electrons. There's a big arrow and the guys like twirling it every now and then, throwing it up in the air. And no, that's not what that means. Um. But but materials that have free electrons tend to be able to pass them along pretty easily. And so those are what we call conductors. They they are able to conduct the flow of electrons. Uh. And then you have um, other elements that are not that that. You know, they pretty much have their electrons locked up. They don't have any free, real free electrons in their their electron shell. Um. Those are not good conductors. They're not so they're they're actually insulators where it actually it resists the flow of electrons. So using these different materials you can create a pathway for electrons to flow through UH. And so that that's the very basis of electronics. Let's talk a little bit about some of the terms you're gonna run into when you whenever you chat about electronics. UM, let's talk about current and let's also talk about one of the UH, the great thinkers in American history who influenced tons and tons of different UH ideas and political movements, not and and just inventions in general. I'm of course talking about Samuel Adams, the beer maker. No, I'm sorry, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin. I was just thinking of the inventor who was most important to me. I'm just waiting for the listener mail to come in on that one. Hey, I bet our listeners appreciate Samuel Adams like I do. Um. Actually I probably appreciate him more, but the so so Benji as I like to call him, or Frankie Baby. Sometimes depending on how much how often we've been over to sam Adams, did I end up on stuff you should know? So, Hey, Chuck, get a load of this guy, you know, um so, so Benjamin Franklin, he he observed this, uh, this phenomenon, and he came up with the concept of current. Now, when Franklin was thinking about this, this phenomenon, he came to the conclusion that current was a flow of positive particles moving across the pathway when across a charge differential. Really okay, so he thought of current as the flow of positive to negative Now we know that current is caused by the flow of electrons, which are negatively charged particles. So even though current goes positive to negative, the electron flow is actually negative to positive. So, in other words, when you talk about current, it's the opposite direction of electron flow, which is incredibly confusing for people who happened to be English majors that would be USA. So so, first of all, get that, let that sink in. Current is essentially that you're talking about electron flow, but it's moving in the opposite direction of electron flow. Because Benjamin Franklin was a dufus about this. Well, you know, he was what you might call a pioneer in the field. I'd call him the Tiger Woods of his day, would you really, yes, yes, I'm not gonna go any further with um wow. Oh no, no, no, no, we're still We're still current. We are current. And actually for current to flow, as you mentioned earlier, you need a pathway. Generally, you're gonna need it to be a complete pathway also known as a circuit. If there's a break in that circuit, then the electrons are not going to flow. Um. Which is important. Yeah, not only because it's important to know to prevent electrocuting yourself, it's also important to know if you're actually going to make something that I'm volves the flow of electricity, and it also also tells you another very basic thing that we'll get into later on, probably not in this podcast, but maybe in a subsequent one. Switches, which are essentially manufactured breaks in a circuit. Yes, you can. You can create a break in a circuit so that you control whether or not electrons are flowing through that particular circuit at any given time. When when the circuit, when the switches closed, the electrons can flow through, and when it's open then they can't. You know, that part of electricity is actually pretty simple. Yeah, it's when you start getting into some of the other concepts that it starts getting complicated. First of all, when we're talking about current, we're talking, uh, we measure that in a ampiers, also known as amps, although because one ampier is actually pretty darn big, we usually talk about milla amps. Yeah, there are a lot of There are a lot of different terms that are used to measure electricity in different capacities. Sorry, um, and their name for a number of different people. Um, and piers are one watts or another. Of course, what electricity is you know, measured in watts overall, but current is measured in ampiers, right and then uh, so you'll hear other terms as well, so you know current? What about voltage? Voltage? Voltage is a little confusing, um for for someone who isn't terribly familiar with electrical fields and uh and the like. Voltage is an electrical force that exists between two charge distributions, and we measure it in volts. There. That's surprising, right, So what are we talking about when we say an electrical force that exists between two charge distributions? Does that actually mean? Okay, so think of electrical charges the same and in the same general sense as we talk about magnets, because, as it turns out, electricity and magnetism have a really strong relationship with one another. Um one can induce the other. In fact, that's true, and as a matter of fact, that's very important to the production of electricity. We'll get into So if you if you're familiar with magnets, you know that the two of the same kind of of poles, like north pole to north pole, repel one another, but opposite poles attract. So a north pole south pole will attract one another. So if you put the north pole of one magnet near the south pole of another magnet, and they're close enough, they will pull one another close together. The same sort of thing can be said about charge. A positive charge is attracted to a negative charge vice versa, whereas similar charges repel one another. So if you have a positive charge on one side and a negative charge on the other side, the the force between the two, that's the voltage. And you can think of it as if you have a particle, a positively charged particle that's going to move away from the positively charged field. Okay, So let's let's say you've got you the positive field on your right and the negative field on the left. Okay, Now you've got a positive particle that you are inserting between the two. All Right, the positive field on the right is going to push that particle because it's the same charge positive to positive. The negative field and left is going to pull that particle because it's opposite charge. Right, So the uh, the force but that it takes to move that, that's what you're talking about with the whole voltage. That's that's the whole concept there, and that depends on a multiple factors. But uh, the other way that you can think of voltage, this is the way that we actually describe it in our article on how electricity works, which is extremely helpful. By the way, do you recommend reading it? Is if you think of current as electron flow, you can think of voltage as the pressure behind the current. So the greater the voltage, the harder it is pushing those electrons. All Right, all right, yeah, I got it. We've got another concept that we have to tackle though, because Lord knows, electronics aren't hard enough. Really, Benjamin, really, do you see what you started here? I mean, yes, granted, without this kind of knowledge, I wouldn't have a job, But seriously, this made my head hurt more than it already was. But to the incident. But his uh, but his his work, you know, his experiments held the key to all of this knowledge. Huh, go fly a height. Um. So the other thing we have to think about is resistance. So you want to talk about ohms, then yes, on the range so uh, a range of holmes. Okay, I'm sorry being silly. So resistance is another term that you're going to encounter whenever you're looking into electronics. Resistance refers to the reduction in current flow. Now, there's all materials have some sort of electrical resistance, all right, so you can think of Uh, materials with high resistance don't allow electrons to flow through very freely. With low resistance, electrons can flow very quickly. And it depends on two different elements, not just saying elements. Yere two different factors. It's so hard to talk about this without confusing things. Two different factors. One is the kind of material you're talking about, so like things like copper, copper has is good it's very very good conductor, right, Um. But also the diameter of the pathway. So in other words, a wire that is thick has a lower resistance than a and wire. And uh, this is important because so if if you think of again we're talking about the the analogy of of if vault is the pressure behind the current. Resistance kind of talks about how big are the pipes that will allow the current to go through. So if the pipes are very large, then the current flows pretty easily, there's not a lot of pressure there. If the pipes are very narrow, there's much more pressure. Uh. And in the case of electronics, pressure pretty much goes too comes around as a heat. So let's say that you have a very very thin wire and you're trying to push a high voltage current through UM, it's gonna heat up really quickly. In fact, if your voltage is too high UM and the current is if it's if it's just too much for that that wire to whole handle, it'll melt. So you need to have a heavier gauge wire that case UM or actually a lower gauge wire. Because that's the other thing that's confusing with electronics. Things that you think, okay, more means means that it's gonna be bigger, not always as you as your gauge gets larger in a wire, the wire it's the diameter actually gets smaller, so like a twelve gauge wire is actually, um, you know, it's actually smaller than a ten gage wire. I actually didn't know that part. You didn't know that that part I didn't get. So that'll that'll bite you if you try and build a circuit and you're like, yeah, ten gauge twelve gauge, what's the difference. I generally pay other people to do it for me. Yeah. I put a nice plastic box. You can do stuff with it, exactly. Unfortunately, I pay quite a bit of money in order for my my circuits to be built within whatever device I already want. But I have to say it's it's kind of a it's sort of a nice to refresh this because is the kind of thing that you learn in junior higher middle school shop class and then immediately forget. Actually it was physics class from me, I think, where we had to build um basic circuits. So, uh, you mentioned ohm resistance is measured in ohms. M oh came up with this crazy law which we call law, which is that voltage equals current times resistance, and of course you can move that around, you know, just basic algebra. So current wood equal voltage divided by resistance that kind of thing. Um. And that's just one of those basic laws that a lot of electronics. You know, you if you're if you're going to be really schooled in it, you have to know Ohm's law. Well that this is ay it obey the law. Um. Yea. This is the kind of thing that I mean, this is it's it's kind of dry in some ways because it's very uh technical. But the thing is the combination of all the things that we have already talked about on this podcast is the basis around what we do with our electronics. And we know the kinds of materials that conduct electricity, the kind of materials that can you know, prohibit the flow of electricity, and the kinds of materials that slow it down. Um. And using those things, you can you know, choose the right the materials to build your electronics out of, and you can get a grip on the flow of electricity and and monitor it. So it's you know, manipulative, manipulative you can mess with it there you go. So so that actually that's that raises a good point though, I mean we're talking about here, we are talking about current voltage and resistance. Um, well, how does that matter to electronics. Well, what what matters is that why would you you know, I mean, why would you build these paths for electrons in the first place. It's because the electron flow can actually produce work. Now, in the case of analog electronics, we're talking about it generating power for things like an electric motor or possibly powering a light bulb by sending electrons through the filament um. But uh, in which case you give off photons. See now it's getting really complicated. Pretty soon. We're gonna go into quantum mechanics light energy. Yeah, so that's that's with analog electronics, but you also have the digital electronics. Now, digital electronics is a little bit different. What you're doing is, instead of of producing work the in the traditional sense, you are doing things like creating devices that can count, that can that can execute certain commands, can that can uh perform calculations um based upon the electron flow that goes through them. And that's a little more difficult to to to wrap your head around than the very basic analog electronics. But I mean that's the that's why you would want to build a circuit in the first places, because you can, you know, by harnessing electrons you can do work. It's pretty incredible stuff really when you think about it. I mean, electrons are are subatomic particles. They're so tiny that you know, you can't see them with even the most powerful light microscope. So yeah, at the same time, there empowering our cities and our transportation in our computers, and ton't they. So there are a couple of other concepts I think we should probably touch on briefly before before we call it a wrap on on just the theory part electronics. One is induction, which we were referenced earlier. Yes, you are now fully admitted into the Society of Electrons. No, there's no tattooing or brand. There's all the neutrons. They are the biggest bullies. Let me tell you. You'd think that they wouldn't be what would be neutral and all I was gonna say, they've always seemed rather impartial to me, that kind of you would think they'd be boring, But no, those guys turn on you in a heartbeat. So uh, induction. Induction is going back to what I was talking about with the whole relationship between electricity and magnetism, and we've talked about electro magnets before, actually in several podcasts. But uh, the flow of electrons can induce a magnetic field, not normally. The way you would do this is you would coil a wire an electron pathway essentially, and as electrons flow through the wire, the coil of the wire, um, they create you create a magnetic field that moves in the opposite direction of the current, which, if you remember, is in the same direction as the electron flow, right opposite direction of the current, same direction as electron flow. Because Franklin thought that there were positive particles moving around and um, he also wore bifocals. So I'm just gonna drop Franklin. He was so certain he wasn't just sure he was positive. Oh man, anyway, so okay, so anyway, the magnetic the magnetic field moves in the opposite direction of the current. And uh so that that's why if you wrap a copper wire around a a an iron nail, and you attached the ends of the copper wire to a battery, you can create on an electromagnet and pick up other little filings, yeah, or paper clip or you know whatever. Um, how yeah, that's the thing is it sort of depends on how strong in the battery you were using, if you used a bigger battery, also depends on the gauge of the wire and how many coils you wrap around the you know, how long the wire is. Um. But more electrons, yeah, bigger electromagnetic field. Yeah yeah, so do you you know there are electro magnets that are very underpowered, really you would say, like the little thing that you made with your battery, and then there are massive electromagnetics magnets that can do things like lift an entire car. You see. I knew you were going to say that, because those are the ones that I always think of as being the you know, seriously powerful electric car. So um. But here's the other thing is that a magnetic field can also induce an electronic electric current. So if you have that same kind of a coil of wire and you pass a magnetic shield so that it comes into contact with the wire, uh, that can actually create a flow of electrons within that wire, even if you didn't have it connected to any sort of power source. Um. Which we talked about a bit with the electric guitar, as I recall, because you know, as you strum and a string on electric guitar. The pickups, uh actually use electro and an electro magnetic principle, the magnetic The strumming of the string creates um the magnetic field, which in turn creates the electric electricity that goes to the amp. So pretty cool stuff. Now, the last thing I think we should probably talk about is capacitance. Okay, do you have the capacity to talk about that or shall I? Well, feeling I am going to all right, I'll talk about it. So, capacitance is when you have, uh, you have two plates separated by either space or some sort of insulating material, and they have um opposite charges. Right, so you've got one plate that's got a positive charge, one plate that's got a negative charge. And capacitance is the basis of one of the elements we'll talk about in our next electronics podcast, which is of course the capacitor. And uh, just so you know, I will probably repeat this again, repeat this again, we'll pete this for the first time in our next podcast. Uh. But the capacitors are both very useful in electronics and those are the things that can kill you, um, and particularly in large devices like television sets. Well, they're used to store electricity and release it upon demands. But they store you know, they could beat They can actually have quite a bit of juice in them. Yeah, and they they can release it very very quickly. It's not like a battery. Um, it's just sort of on. It's like all or nothing. Yeah kind of. That's that's one of the possibilities. Yes, So if you were too if you were to yeah, if you were to touch the no, no, if you were to touch the lead of a capacitor while it was fully charged, you could discharge it directly into you. And with certain devices like televisions, that means that it could kill you. And yeah, the TV does not need to be plugged in or turned on or anything for that to happen. If the capacitor is holding a charge, it will hold that charge. And if you touch it and discharge it um ouch or possibly yeah, yeah, possibly fairly well um beyond ouch. Alright, So anyway, we have pretty much covered the basics of electronic theory. Um. I think we're gonna need to go and get something to drink, like, um, something from Sam Adams possible. Well, did you uh, did you want to talk about the different kinds of current, oh, alternating versus direct, Yes, do you do you want to chat about that for a little bit. I mean, we can talk about Edison versus Tesla, well, which that would be softballing it. Well, one of the things that uh, well, I wasn't hurting if this this fell into this one or the no. No, I think we can talk about here because they're they're essentially two different types of current. Um, you know, the the very first one, the most simple, is the direct current, which you know basically goes around and around and around in the same direction and doesn't stop. Alternating current, on the other hand, uh, goes you know, switches direction at regular intervals, right, So the current, the current will go from one direction and then I'll go to the other, which of course means that the electron flow is doing the same thing, just in the opposite direction. And that's that's one of the funky things about electricity. You know, you're going, okay, wait a minute, how is it switching direction? But it actually helps move it from one place to another. And that's that's one of the things that helps us uh uh, you know, send electricity over long distances. Yeah. As it turns out, alternating current is very very useful if you want to do something like generate power at a power plant and then distributed across a wide power grid. Um, if you without without alternating current, you couldn't rely on things like transformers, which again we'll probably get into I don't even know that will necessarily get into that in the next podcast. That might be for a third one, because we're gonna go I think into the basic circuitry for the next one. Well, transformers in essence, transformers change low voltage electricity into high voltage electricity, or vice versa and vice versa. That's the thing is that it high voltage electricity travels better and that's one of those things that gives you the opportunity to send it long longer distances. But also it turns out that it will totally kill you if you if you come into contact with it. So clearly you need to have some way to trans for that high voltage into low voltage so that you can use it without frying yourself. So essentially you need one at both ends. You need to change it to high voltage, send it along the power line, then change it back into low voltage so that you can use it in your house. And we'll get into this is the basis. I think we can get into that in a future in a future podcast. Um. So, our next electronics podcast, just to give you guys a little preview, will be about the basic elements that you find in circuits and what they do and how they relate to these concepts that we've laid out in this particular episode. So look forward to that, Chris and I will look forward to recording it and approximately two minutes because through the magic of podcasts, you guys get a break and we don't. No, no, it's this is this is really interesting stuff. I mean, granted, I will admit I had to do a lot of reading to get back up to speed on this, because it has it's been pretty much since high school since I've actually really looked at electronics from a mechanical physics sort of perspective as opposed to just Hey, that's awesome. I want three of those, so good times. All right, And I don't have any listener mail today. Uh it's just because again, I was researching this so hard that I totally forgot to pull up listener mail, not that I have any shortage of it. Um, you guys keep on writing. They are pouring in and I appreciate them, and we have been adding topics to our list quite uh quite a bit recently. That's true. And if you if you'd like to write us and send us a note with your thoughts, please do so at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. And remember we do have articles on these concepts. In fact, our article on how electricity works as written by Marshall Brain and our buddy Robert Lamb. They worked on this. Uh you know, Marshall wrote an article many years ago and Robert has been updating it and it's it's very very helpful. It's got some good illustrations, more analogies, fewer puns. So for those of you who find our puns painful, I recommend the article that's at how stuff works dot com. And Chris and I will talk to you again, probably about electronics really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the how Stuff Works homepage. 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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm the tech editor here at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as always, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, very subdued. It's a cloudy day outside where we are at the moment that we're recording this, and I think we're both sort of mellow today. Yeah, well step it up. Also, blood loss has affected me someone the shaving incident. Yes, we we won't go into detail. We'll just the incident is good enough. The surgeons hope to reattach his scalp. Anyway, Yeah, I took just a little off the top. Nice, Okay, So I'm a I actually am feeling charged up about our podcast this afternoon. I found it shocking. You know, we're gonna do that all all podcasts that people right and complain about our overpunnings as well, they should really frankly, yes, yes, frankly, so it's a pun that no one's gonna get yet. Um, so we are tackling electronics and basic electronics. But in order to talk about electronics, you can't. You can't really just leap into it because it really makes absolutely no sense unless you have and here's another pun a grounding and electrical theory. Yes, I can't. I didn't even mean to do that. And as I was saying, and I just so, do you want to start small? Yeah, let's um, let's start electricity. Start small. Yeah, we're electricity all has to do with the movements of a particular subatomic particle that would be the electron. Right, do you see a pattern here with electricity, electron onyx electrons? Yes, yes, I do, not to be negative or anything. Alright, So see the the nucleus of an atom is made up of protons and neutrons, and you know, revolving around that are the electrons in those outer shells, although revolving is probably uh not terribly accurate, zipping around. Okay, we'll go with that, zipping around because they're not necessarily any circular, right, They're actually pretty erratic and and funky. The more we know about electronics, or sorry, not electronics, but the more we know about atomic behavior, the more bizarre, it appears to me. It seems like as we as we get gain more information, it becomes harder and harder for me to get a grip on it. But in general, yes, the electrons are the negatively charged particles that orbit around the nucleus of an atom and some you know, it all depends on what what kind of material you're talking about. I mean, different materials have different number of electrons orbiting them. Um. Some of have what we often call free electrons and some do not. You can tell the ones that do because they have a sign outside the sets free electrons. There's a big arrow and the guys like twirling it every now and then, throwing it up in the air. And no, that's not what that means. Um. But but materials that have free electrons tend to be able to pass them along pretty easily. And so those are what we call conductors. They they are able to conduct the flow of electrons. Uh. And then you have um, other elements that are not that that. You know, they pretty much have their electrons locked up. They don't have any free, real free electrons in their their electron shell. Um. Those are not good conductors. They're not so they're they're actually insulators where it actually it resists the flow of electrons. So using these different materials you can create a pathway for electrons to flow through UH. And so that that's the very basis of electronics. Let's talk a little bit about some of the terms you're gonna run into when you whenever you chat about electronics. UM, let's talk about current and let's also talk about one of the UH, the great thinkers in American history who influenced tons and tons of different UH ideas and political movements, not and and just inventions in general. I'm of course talking about Samuel Adams, the beer maker. No, I'm sorry, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin. I was just thinking of the inventor who was most important to me. I'm just waiting for the listener mail to come in on that one. Hey, I bet our listeners appreciate Samuel Adams like I do. Um. Actually I probably appreciate him more, but the so so Benji as I like to call him, or Frankie Baby. Sometimes depending on how much how often we've been over to sam Adams, did I end up on stuff you should know? So, Hey, Chuck, get a load of this guy, you know, um so, so Benjamin Franklin, he he observed this, uh, this phenomenon, and he came up with the concept of current. Now, when Franklin was thinking about this, this phenomenon, he came to the conclusion that current was a flow of positive particles moving across the pathway when across a charge differential. Really okay, so he thought of current as the flow of positive to negative Now we know that current is caused by the flow of electrons, which are negatively charged particles. So even though current goes positive to negative, the electron flow is actually negative to positive. So, in other words, when you talk about current, it's the opposite direction of electron flow, which is incredibly confusing for people who happened to be English majors that would be USA. So so, first of all, get that, let that sink in. Current is essentially that you're talking about electron flow, but it's moving in the opposite direction of electron flow. Because Benjamin Franklin was a dufus about this. Well, you know, he was what you might call a pioneer in the field. I'd call him the Tiger Woods of his day, would you really, yes, yes, I'm not gonna go any further with um wow. Oh no, no, no, no, we're still We're still current. We are current. And actually for current to flow, as you mentioned earlier, you need a pathway. Generally, you're gonna need it to be a complete pathway also known as a circuit. If there's a break in that circuit, then the electrons are not going to flow. Um. Which is important. Yeah, not only because it's important to know to prevent electrocuting yourself, it's also important to know if you're actually going to make something that I'm volves the flow of electricity, and it also also tells you another very basic thing that we'll get into later on, probably not in this podcast, but maybe in a subsequent one. Switches, which are essentially manufactured breaks in a circuit. Yes, you can. You can create a break in a circuit so that you control whether or not electrons are flowing through that particular circuit at any given time. When when the circuit, when the switches closed, the electrons can flow through, and when it's open then they can't. You know, that part of electricity is actually pretty simple. Yeah, it's when you start getting into some of the other concepts that it starts getting complicated. First of all, when we're talking about current, we're talking, uh, we measure that in a ampiers, also known as amps, although because one ampier is actually pretty darn big, we usually talk about milla amps. Yeah, there are a lot of There are a lot of different terms that are used to measure electricity in different capacities. Sorry, um, and their name for a number of different people. Um, and piers are one watts or another. Of course, what electricity is you know, measured in watts overall, but current is measured in ampiers, right and then uh, so you'll hear other terms as well, so you know current? What about voltage? Voltage? Voltage is a little confusing, um for for someone who isn't terribly familiar with electrical fields and uh and the like. Voltage is an electrical force that exists between two charge distributions, and we measure it in volts. There. That's surprising, right, So what are we talking about when we say an electrical force that exists between two charge distributions? Does that actually mean? Okay, so think of electrical charges the same and in the same general sense as we talk about magnets, because, as it turns out, electricity and magnetism have a really strong relationship with one another. Um one can induce the other. In fact, that's true, and as a matter of fact, that's very important to the production of electricity. We'll get into So if you if you're familiar with magnets, you know that the two of the same kind of of poles, like north pole to north pole, repel one another, but opposite poles attract. So a north pole south pole will attract one another. So if you put the north pole of one magnet near the south pole of another magnet, and they're close enough, they will pull one another close together. The same sort of thing can be said about charge. A positive charge is attracted to a negative charge vice versa, whereas similar charges repel one another. So if you have a positive charge on one side and a negative charge on the other side, the the force between the two, that's the voltage. And you can think of it as if you have a particle, a positively charged particle that's going to move away from the positively charged field. Okay, So let's let's say you've got you the positive field on your right and the negative field on the left. Okay, Now you've got a positive particle that you are inserting between the two. All Right, the positive field on the right is going to push that particle because it's the same charge positive to positive. The negative field and left is going to pull that particle because it's opposite charge. Right, So the uh, the force but that it takes to move that, that's what you're talking about with the whole voltage. That's that's the whole concept there, and that depends on a multiple factors. But uh, the other way that you can think of voltage, this is the way that we actually describe it in our article on how electricity works, which is extremely helpful. By the way, do you recommend reading it? Is if you think of current as electron flow, you can think of voltage as the pressure behind the current. So the greater the voltage, the harder it is pushing those electrons. All Right, all right, yeah, I got it. We've got another concept that we have to tackle though, because Lord knows, electronics aren't hard enough. Really, Benjamin, really, do you see what you started here? I mean, yes, granted, without this kind of knowledge, I wouldn't have a job, But seriously, this made my head hurt more than it already was. But to the incident. But his uh, but his his work, you know, his experiments held the key to all of this knowledge. Huh, go fly a height. Um. So the other thing we have to think about is resistance. So you want to talk about ohms, then yes, on the range so uh, a range of holmes. Okay, I'm sorry being silly. So resistance is another term that you're going to encounter whenever you're looking into electronics. Resistance refers to the reduction in current flow. Now, there's all materials have some sort of electrical resistance, all right, so you can think of Uh, materials with high resistance don't allow electrons to flow through very freely. With low resistance, electrons can flow very quickly. And it depends on two different elements, not just saying elements. Yere two different factors. It's so hard to talk about this without confusing things. Two different factors. One is the kind of material you're talking about, so like things like copper, copper has is good it's very very good conductor, right, Um. But also the diameter of the pathway. So in other words, a wire that is thick has a lower resistance than a and wire. And uh, this is important because so if if you think of again we're talking about the the analogy of of if vault is the pressure behind the current. Resistance kind of talks about how big are the pipes that will allow the current to go through. So if the pipes are very large, then the current flows pretty easily, there's not a lot of pressure there. If the pipes are very narrow, there's much more pressure. Uh. And in the case of electronics, pressure pretty much goes too comes around as a heat. So let's say that you have a very very thin wire and you're trying to push a high voltage current through UM, it's gonna heat up really quickly. In fact, if your voltage is too high UM and the current is if it's if it's just too much for that that wire to whole handle, it'll melt. So you need to have a heavier gauge wire that case UM or actually a lower gauge wire. Because that's the other thing that's confusing with electronics. Things that you think, okay, more means means that it's gonna be bigger, not always as you as your gauge gets larger in a wire, the wire it's the diameter actually gets smaller, so like a twelve gauge wire is actually, um, you know, it's actually smaller than a ten gage wire. I actually didn't know that part. You didn't know that that part I didn't get. So that'll that'll bite you if you try and build a circuit and you're like, yeah, ten gauge twelve gauge, what's the difference. I generally pay other people to do it for me. Yeah. I put a nice plastic box. You can do stuff with it, exactly. Unfortunately, I pay quite a bit of money in order for my my circuits to be built within whatever device I already want. But I have to say it's it's kind of a it's sort of a nice to refresh this because is the kind of thing that you learn in junior higher middle school shop class and then immediately forget. Actually it was physics class from me, I think, where we had to build um basic circuits. So, uh, you mentioned ohm resistance is measured in ohms. M oh came up with this crazy law which we call law, which is that voltage equals current times resistance, and of course you can move that around, you know, just basic algebra. So current wood equal voltage divided by resistance that kind of thing. Um. And that's just one of those basic laws that a lot of electronics. You know, you if you're if you're going to be really schooled in it, you have to know Ohm's law. Well that this is ay it obey the law. Um. Yea. This is the kind of thing that I mean, this is it's it's kind of dry in some ways because it's very uh technical. But the thing is the combination of all the things that we have already talked about on this podcast is the basis around what we do with our electronics. And we know the kinds of materials that conduct electricity, the kind of materials that can you know, prohibit the flow of electricity, and the kinds of materials that slow it down. Um. And using those things, you can you know, choose the right the materials to build your electronics out of, and you can get a grip on the flow of electricity and and monitor it. So it's you know, manipulative, manipulative you can mess with it there you go. So so that actually that's that raises a good point though, I mean we're talking about here, we are talking about current voltage and resistance. Um, well, how does that matter to electronics. Well, what what matters is that why would you you know, I mean, why would you build these paths for electrons in the first place. It's because the electron flow can actually produce work. Now, in the case of analog electronics, we're talking about it generating power for things like an electric motor or possibly powering a light bulb by sending electrons through the filament um. But uh, in which case you give off photons. See now it's getting really complicated. Pretty soon. We're gonna go into quantum mechanics light energy. Yeah, so that's that's with analog electronics, but you also have the digital electronics. Now, digital electronics is a little bit different. What you're doing is, instead of of producing work the in the traditional sense, you are doing things like creating devices that can count, that can that can execute certain commands, can that can uh perform calculations um based upon the electron flow that goes through them. And that's a little more difficult to to to wrap your head around than the very basic analog electronics. But I mean that's the that's why you would want to build a circuit in the first places, because you can, you know, by harnessing electrons you can do work. It's pretty incredible stuff really when you think about it. I mean, electrons are are subatomic particles. They're so tiny that you know, you can't see them with even the most powerful light microscope. So yeah, at the same time, there empowering our cities and our transportation in our computers, and ton't they. So there are a couple of other concepts I think we should probably touch on briefly before before we call it a wrap on on just the theory part electronics. One is induction, which we were referenced earlier. Yes, you are now fully admitted into the Society of Electrons. No, there's no tattooing or brand. There's all the neutrons. They are the biggest bullies. Let me tell you. You'd think that they wouldn't be what would be neutral and all I was gonna say, they've always seemed rather impartial to me, that kind of you would think they'd be boring, But no, those guys turn on you in a heartbeat. So uh, induction. Induction is going back to what I was talking about with the whole relationship between electricity and magnetism, and we've talked about electro magnets before, actually in several podcasts. But uh, the flow of electrons can induce a magnetic field, not normally. The way you would do this is you would coil a wire an electron pathway essentially, and as electrons flow through the wire, the coil of the wire, um, they create you create a magnetic field that moves in the opposite direction of the current, which, if you remember, is in the same direction as the electron flow, right opposite direction of the current, same direction as electron flow. Because Franklin thought that there were positive particles moving around and um, he also wore bifocals. So I'm just gonna drop Franklin. He was so certain he wasn't just sure he was positive. Oh man, anyway, so okay, so anyway, the magnetic the magnetic field moves in the opposite direction of the current. And uh so that that's why if you wrap a copper wire around a a an iron nail, and you attached the ends of the copper wire to a battery, you can create on an electromagnet and pick up other little filings, yeah, or paper clip or you know whatever. Um, how yeah, that's the thing is it sort of depends on how strong in the battery you were using, if you used a bigger battery, also depends on the gauge of the wire and how many coils you wrap around the you know, how long the wire is. Um. But more electrons, yeah, bigger electromagnetic field. Yeah yeah, so do you you know there are electro magnets that are very underpowered, really you would say, like the little thing that you made with your battery, and then there are massive electromagnetics magnets that can do things like lift an entire car. You see. I knew you were going to say that, because those are the ones that I always think of as being the you know, seriously powerful electric car. So um. But here's the other thing is that a magnetic field can also induce an electronic electric current. So if you have that same kind of a coil of wire and you pass a magnetic shield so that it comes into contact with the wire, uh, that can actually create a flow of electrons within that wire, even if you didn't have it connected to any sort of power source. Um. Which we talked about a bit with the electric guitar, as I recall, because you know, as you strum and a string on electric guitar. The pickups, uh actually use electro and an electro magnetic principle, the magnetic The strumming of the string creates um the magnetic field, which in turn creates the electric electricity that goes to the amp. So pretty cool stuff. Now, the last thing I think we should probably talk about is capacitance. Okay, do you have the capacity to talk about that or shall I? Well, feeling I am going to all right, I'll talk about it. So, capacitance is when you have, uh, you have two plates separated by either space or some sort of insulating material, and they have um opposite charges. Right, so you've got one plate that's got a positive charge, one plate that's got a negative charge. And capacitance is the basis of one of the elements we'll talk about in our next electronics podcast, which is of course the capacitor. And uh, just so you know, I will probably repeat this again, repeat this again, we'll pete this for the first time in our next podcast. Uh. But the capacitors are both very useful in electronics and those are the things that can kill you, um, and particularly in large devices like television sets. Well, they're used to store electricity and release it upon demands. But they store you know, they could beat They can actually have quite a bit of juice in them. Yeah, and they they can release it very very quickly. It's not like a battery. Um, it's just sort of on. It's like all or nothing. Yeah kind of. That's that's one of the possibilities. Yes, So if you were too if you were to yeah, if you were to touch the no, no, if you were to touch the lead of a capacitor while it was fully charged, you could discharge it directly into you. And with certain devices like televisions, that means that it could kill you. And yeah, the TV does not need to be plugged in or turned on or anything for that to happen. If the capacitor is holding a charge, it will hold that charge. And if you touch it and discharge it um ouch or possibly yeah, yeah, possibly fairly well um beyond ouch. Alright, So anyway, we have pretty much covered the basics of electronic theory. Um. I think we're gonna need to go and get something to drink, like, um, something from Sam Adams possible. Well, did you uh, did you want to talk about the different kinds of current, oh, alternating versus direct, Yes, do you do you want to chat about that for a little bit. I mean, we can talk about Edison versus Tesla, well, which that would be softballing it. Well, one of the things that uh, well, I wasn't hurting if this this fell into this one or the no. No, I think we can talk about here because they're they're essentially two different types of current. Um, you know, the the very first one, the most simple, is the direct current, which you know basically goes around and around and around in the same direction and doesn't stop. Alternating current, on the other hand, uh, goes you know, switches direction at regular intervals, right, So the current, the current will go from one direction and then I'll go to the other, which of course means that the electron flow is doing the same thing, just in the opposite direction. And that's that's one of the funky things about electricity. You know, you're going, okay, wait a minute, how is it switching direction? But it actually helps move it from one place to another. And that's that's one of the things that helps us uh uh, you know, send electricity over long distances. Yeah. As it turns out, alternating current is very very useful if you want to do something like generate power at a power plant and then distributed across a wide power grid. Um, if you without without alternating current, you couldn't rely on things like transformers, which again we'll probably get into I don't even know that will necessarily get into that in the next podcast. That might be for a third one, because we're gonna go I think into the basic circuitry for the next one. Well, transformers in essence, transformers change low voltage electricity into high voltage electricity, or vice versa and vice versa. That's the thing is that it high voltage electricity travels better and that's one of those things that gives you the opportunity to send it long longer distances. But also it turns out that it will totally kill you if you if you come into contact with it. So clearly you need to have some way to trans for that high voltage into low voltage so that you can use it without frying yourself. So essentially you need one at both ends. You need to change it to high voltage, send it along the power line, then change it back into low voltage so that you can use it in your house. And we'll get into this is the basis. I think we can get into that in a future in a future podcast. Um. So, our next electronics podcast, just to give you guys a little preview, will be about the basic elements that you find in circuits and what they do and how they relate to these concepts that we've laid out in this particular episode. So look forward to that, Chris and I will look forward to recording it and approximately two minutes because through the magic of podcasts, you guys get a break and we don't. No, no, it's this is this is really interesting stuff. I mean, granted, I will admit I had to do a lot of reading to get back up to speed on this, because it has it's been pretty much since high school since I've actually really looked at electronics from a mechanical physics sort of perspective as opposed to just Hey, that's awesome. I want three of those, so good times. All right, And I don't have any listener mail today. Uh it's just because again, I was researching this so hard that I totally forgot to pull up listener mail, not that I have any shortage of it. Um, you guys keep on writing. They are pouring in and I appreciate them, and we have been adding topics to our list quite uh quite a bit recently. That's true. And if you if you'd like to write us and send us a note with your thoughts, please do so at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. And remember we do have articles on these concepts. In fact, our article on how electricity works as written by Marshall Brain and our buddy Robert Lamb. They worked on this. Uh you know, Marshall wrote an article many years ago and Robert has been updating it and it's it's very very helpful. It's got some good illustrations, more analogies, fewer puns. So for those of you who find our puns painful, I recommend the article that's at how stuff works dot com. And Chris and I will talk to you again, probably about electronics really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the how Stuff Works homepage. 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