Almost everything and everyone is dependent on electricity. But electricity is not just something you buy in a battery. Being one of the basic ingredients of the universe, the electricity is something that has revolutionized the way life is on this planet. Talking of all scientific innovations, electricity is by far one of the best things happened to the entire human civilization. And now, we can’t imagine a world without electricity. As we know that everything around us is made of invincible atoms that contain particles with electric charge which is either positive or negative, the movement of electric charges creates the electric current, which drives much of the modern world. There are over hundreds of interesting and fun facts about electricity out there. But let me be limited here to share some of the most fundamental electricity which I think are mostly unheard or simply put aside. I’d like to present this list with some of the cool facts about electricity.
10. Historical work of Franklin
Heard of Benjamin Franklin? He was a printer by trade and a scientist by fame—often touted as a man of action by all accounts. Maybe many of you are unaware of one of his historical experiments. Franklin did a historical work of providing lightning a form of electricity with similar properties. He just performed simple experiment. For that he tried out flying a kite in thunderstorm. Along with the kite, he also tied an iron rod (key) as well. His iron rod amazingly drew lightning down into his house and every time there was the lightning, the bells would ring and the spark would illuminate his house. Legend has it that his wife, Deborah, got so agitated by the ringing bells and flashing lights that she wrote to Benjamin asking him how to disconnect the experiment. He was off in London that time. Anyway he came out to prove an interesting fact that lightning and static electricity are not different from each other at all.
9. Speed of Electricity
What’s the fastest thing ever known to the Science? Light, yeah? However scientists are striving to discover the bodies which are even way faster than the light per se, the speed of light is still the only proven and ultimate speed. So the electricity travels at the speed of light which is more than 300,000 kilometers per second making it the fastest speed of anything in this globe. Having said all that, the speed of electricity is actually determined by its conductor and the type of electricity. There are some types which have a speed of zero while others move at the speed of light.
8. Who invented the Battery?
Did you ever know the man behind the invention of battery? If not, he is Alessandro Volta. He was the one to introduce for the first time that when we connect two metal strips made up of different material in the Sulphuric acid solution, it makes a battery, the source of electricity generation. Volta’s voltaic setup was the first ever “wet cell battery” that produced a reliable and steady current of electricity.
7. Electricity Generation
What are the sources that we use to generate electricity? Actually there are many forms of energy resources that we use to make the electricity, the main among them are water, animal manure, wind and sun. But if we analyze and compare the power plants in the globe, about 26.8% of the world’s total power is produced from Coal, 20% from Natural Gas, 5.8% from Nuclear, 10.6% from Wind, Solar and Geothermal, and only 2.2% from Hydro power.
6. First Bulb Ever
Credit for the first person to invent the bulb goes to Thomas Edison. Yes, he was the man who enlightened the whole world for the first time with the glowing light bulb in 1879 for the first time. It makes everyone wonder that Edison received the formal schooling of only three months as he was dismissed from school for being retarded. He made his history with 1093 patents making him one of the most popular inventors of all time.
5. Property of Electricity
We all know that electricity is non-renewable form of energy per se. But the energy sources used for the generation of electricity are renewable as well. The sources like wind, water, and sun are renewable sources of energy. And renewable sources of energy have to be the best way to produce electricity. It’s actually the greener way of generating electricity.
4. Magnetism and Electricity
It’s obviously true that the purpose of generator is to generate the electricity. But did you know that the mechanism behind the generation of electricity is conversion of mechanical energy into electrical energy? Originally, both electricity and magnetism were thought of as two separate forces but it perception changed later on with the publication of Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism by James Clerk Maxwell in 1983.
3. First uses of electricity
In present day, we use electricity for various purposes. Don’t you wonder what was electricity used for the very first time. Well, the first use of electricity was for nothing else but only for lighting and some domestic purposes. Even if look back the recorded history, the first practical application of electricity is Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod.
2. Bio-electricity
What is bio-electricity? It’s actually a natural use of electricity in human body, which was discovered by Luigi Galvani. Postulating his views of Bio-electricity in 1791, he claimed that the medium used by nerve cells to pass signals from the muscles is also electricity. When we think of electricity, we generally tend to visualize it as something out of our human bodies. But Science has proved that there’s a form of electricity prevalent in the bodies of every living creature. Bio-electricity is undoubtedly one of the boosted innovations in Science.
1. It’s an Awesome Force
Electricity is a basic, but one of the most powerful forces of nature. The lightning shows how powerful it is. One lightning bolt has enough electricity to service 200000 homes. When strong air currents tear apart the positive and negative electrical charges, lightning do happens creating huge tension and eventually releasing a giant spark. Actually, the giant spark is caused due to the phenomenon called Static Electricity. We are known to the fact that the electricity can destroy or kill but it’s the talented engineers who can tame its wild power to light the dark planet.
Final Conclusion:
Do you think you can work without basic essentials like light, television, cellphones, computers, electric cooking ranges, electric heating systems, and even water (needs electricity to pump it in in most of the countries)? Having practically no disadvantages at all, electricity has now made the world too much dependent on it. Like all other scientific innovations, there are some flip sides of electricity as well. One of the things bad about electricity is: it can KILL you. Additionally, there are some points we really need to be aware of. Having seen the ways the energy is produced, electricity industry is by far known to be the largest player to human generated greenhouse gasses emissions each year. And having gotten used to rely on it and knowing that electricity is the thing we can count on to power this entire world, we really need to adopt the greener way of generating electricity. And we know that it’s for the better cause, for saving this planet from the serious consequences.
Arun is an IT-gradate. But writing is something he has innate passion for. He loves to explore new things, places and ideas.