Understanding Electricity, Electric Circuit and AC and DC Circuits ~ Nhat Nguyen

What is electricity?

Electricity is a mysterious entity, it is sometimes difficult to describe and understand exactly what it is. To try and understand electricity, you need to go back to the basic back to the very element of matter that makes up all things. The Atom. All matter is made of Atoms. All Atoms are made up of neutrons, protons, and electronics. Neutrons have a neutral electric charge. Protons as a positive electric charge and electrons have a negative electric charge.

Normally if an atom has a neutral charge it has the same amount of electrons and protons. Electrons, however, can be easily moved from or to the electron orbital of an atom either by losing or gaining electrons. Thereby becoming either positively or negatively charged. Electronics circuits have electrons moving through them in a multitude of ways. The study of electronics concerns itself with directing these electrons to achieve the desired effect with electronic components. Electronics designers are the coach, the components are the playing field and the electrons are the player.

The definition of electricity states that electricity is a form of energy resulting from the existence of charged particles such as electronics, either statistically as an accumulation of charge or dynamically as a current. The definition further refers to the two types of electricity, first being the static or static electricity and the second being dynamic or an electric current.

Static electricity is an electric charge that is not moving. A great example of static electricity is rubbing a balloon on a sweater or your hair and sticking it to a wall. The charges sit on the surfaces of the object, yet do not move. An imbalance of electric charge causes the surface to attract or repel like charges repel and opposite charge attract.

Electric Current

Electric current is what happens when electrons flow through a conductor such as a copper wire, electrons move from atom to atom resulting in an electric current.

We can see this here in a very simple circuit of a flashlight consisting of a battery the filament light bulb some wire and a switch the picture below gives a visualization of electron flow or current flow through an electric circuit.