Question: how does electric work

Senga Robertson answered on 13 Nov 2017:

Hi Kung Fu Tiger

this is the answer I gave to a similar question and Jake added so really interesting extra points. You can see it all in the link he posted but I’ve pasted my answer here too:

the one sentence explanation is that electricity is a form of energy that can flow from one place to another (electric current) or build up in one place (static electricity).

Electricity is caused by electrons, electrons orbit/ travel around the edges of atoms and atoms make up everything on earth…including us. Electrons have something called a negative charge but luckily there are also things in atoms called protons that have a positive charge so it means that overall an atom isn’t normally positively or negatively charged. Since atoms join together to make molecules and molecules make up everything on earth it means that normal things like our hair and clothes aren’t positively or negatively charged.

Static electricity : have you ever ran across a carpet and then touched something metal, like a door handle and got a shock? I can explain this…as you run across the carpet your feet are rubbing against it, this builds up energy in your body, you might even start to feel a weird tingly feeling, this is the electricity building up in your body (don’t worry, it’s not dangerous) so when you touch something metal the electricity will instantly jump to the metal handle…which is when you might feel a shock…sometimes if you touch another person instead of something metal it can actually give them a shock too!

Electrical current is a bit different, that’s the electricity which powers your home and….well pretty much everything electrical. Electrical current is when electrons move from one place to another around a circuit. A good example is if you think of a battery, a battery has 2 ends a negative and a positive end but until you put it into a toy it doesn’t give out electricity. when you put it in a toy the toy has wires inside that conduct electricity in a circuit so when you put the battery in it completes the circuit. The electrons then flow out of the negative end of the battery, around the circuit to the positive end of the battery.

gosh, that was a long answer. I hope it made sense!

Senga