John Gemender, age 11, of Roslyn, Penna,,

 What exactly is electricity?

We often learn how to use something before we learn how it works* Mankind used fire for long ages before he learned the nature of fire, Perhaps you learned to bounce a ball or skate over the ice before you learned the laws which make these things possible, Mankind learned to use electricity before he understood the nature of this great force of nature  In fact, there is still a great deal more to learn about its

The first experimenters used a chemical battery to make a current run through a circuit of copper faire: The current was very small and the gadget was regarded as an interesting toy  But the experimenters noticed a kinship between electricity and magnetism, another mysterious force of nature, The current in the little wire made a magnetic needle turn towards it as it would turn towards the earthts magnetic pole,

These and other observations led to the dynamo which uses a magnet to make an electric current flow through a circuit of copper wire  The current flows when a disk or coil of copper wire cuts through and through the invisible lines of magnetic force which surround a magnet  This gives a dolt to something within the wire circuit and the wires become alive with electric current  The jolt is called voltage, though we still do not know for sure why or how it happens 

We do know more of what happens in the wire circuit, however  The wire of the circuit is made from atoms of copper  The atomic number of copper is 29, which means that there are 29 protons in the nucleus of the copper atom  There are also 29 electrons swarming around the nucleus of the copper atom  A11 electrons are arranged in orderly shells, one alongside another  The copper atom has a complete inner shall with two electrons, a second shell complete with eight and a third complete with 18 electrons.

The 29th electron is a lone ranger in a fourth and uncompleted shell   On the Periodic Table, you can find a whole group of atoms with a lone electron in an uncompleted shell  These lone electrons have a lot of freedom and tend to wander from atom to atom, especially in a metal where the atoms are closely packed together, Copper wire teems with countless trillions of these footloose electrons  The dolt of voltage from the generator merely puts electrical pressure on them and makes them all move in the same direction 

In direct current, all 29 electrons are moving in one direction  In alternating current, they dog together back and forth  The number of dogs per second is called a cycle  A reading lamp needs the energy from about three billion, billion electrons dogging back and forth 60 times a second