Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: How Electricity Works

Transcript

Selects: How Electricity Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's Joshum. For this week's Select, I've chosen
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: our twenty fourteen episode on electricity, and I chose it
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: as a kind of Casey Casum esque special dedication to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: one of our younger listeners, Charlie Pendergrast, who wrote in
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: with a bunch of good ideas, one of which was electricity. Well,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: rather than just send him a link and being boring,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I thought I'd share it as a select for everybody
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to enjoy. So if you enjoy this select, you can
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: thank Charlie. Thanks Charlie.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing his
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: last Chance garage hat, which means that all is right
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: with the world. Yeah, you know, if Chuck's not wearing
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that hat, who knows what's going on?
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought a loss of sing yeah once. Yeah,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I think I.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Vaguely remember that dude freaked.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I was on the with Delta and everything, and I
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, here it is.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It's on my head your back pocket, like Bruce Springsteen.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Uh, how you doing great, Chuck, Yes, let's talk about electricity, electricity, electricity.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I've had the Talking Heads song in my head, which
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: one electricity? Okay, where all these sees are little dots.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say once in a lifetime. No,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that's what is that called once in a lifetime? Yeah?
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I've been singing the Schoolhouse Rock electricity song
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: over and over in my head.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: What about the electric company theme song? Mmm, I haven't
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: been singing that, but do you remember it?
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah? That was I was electric Company over Sesame Street even.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't think there had to be like
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a you know, I didn't know it was like the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Stones or the Beatles, you know.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: No, it's uh and the correct answer there's the Who.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: By the way, what do you mean like that?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Who?
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Is that? Right?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: No?
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I love the Who, But I'm with you.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: I don't see the need to rank things like that.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Well, Plus, the electric Company came on after Sesame Street,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it skewed slightly older.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: I think Sesame Street to me felt like, you know,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: six seven eight year olds.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Electric companies were.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Like eight, nine to ten, twelve, and then even younger
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: than Sesame Street was Pinwheel if I remember correctly, and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: that was after your time, Okay, Pinwell was pretty cute.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: It was like little kids, and then Sesame Street was
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: like little kids, and then Electric Company was like cool.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Romper Room was kind of pre Sesame Street.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Even so, was that the one with Reggedy Ann and Andy? Mmm?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I don't remember. I just remember it was very immature. Yeah,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: it's very childish.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: You think Raggedy Ann and Andy were in that. Well.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: At any rate, we've angered enough people now, I know.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I have an intro for this one.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, you ready, about thirteen point eight billion years ago,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: a little something called the Big Bang happened and the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: universe was created, so says you, So this is a
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: lot of people. Yeah, you know, we weren't around. Nobody
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: saw it, but it's been detected and it's strongly suspected
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: by scientists that the universe is thirteen point eight billion
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: years old and that it came from something called the
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Big Bang, which, by the way, I would love to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: do an episode on. Yeah, let's do it, okay, and
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: under the auspices of the Big Bang theory, not the
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: TV show, but the actual theory. At that moment, all
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of the energy in the entire universe was created. Right then,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: boom bam. Ever, since that point the energy has no
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: more energy has been created and none of that energy
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: has been destroyed. But it changes states, it changes shapes,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: It can be locked up in different places. It can
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: be transferred from one place to another via some natural
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: ways like convection, conduction, radiation, and like I said, it
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: can be stored in stuff. It can be stored in
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: your body. Right. Fat is potential energy that can be
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: burned and used for energy to carry out work, which
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: is all we're looking to do is work. We use
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: energy to carry out work, whether it's digging a shovel
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: or lighting a light bulb. That's what energy does. It
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: produces work. Right, Okay, we've figured out along the way
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: that we don't have to wait around for radiation or
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: convection or conduction to do its thing to provide energy,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: because we'd have a lot of waiting to do. We
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be in the computer age right now if it
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: weren't for something called electricity, which is basically how humans
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: have figured out how to harness converting energy from one
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: type of another and then transmitting it very long distance. Yeah,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: because electricity isn't a primary energy source like the sun
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: or solar radiation, or nuclear energy or even the flow
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: of water kinetic energy. No, it's created, yeah, it's and
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: it's a secondary energy source. It's a carrier, that's right.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: So electricity carries energy from one point to another. And
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: if you understand that, you understand the very basis of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: what we're going to talk about today.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Like we've figured out how to generate electricity to carry
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: energy to produce work down the line.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: That's my intra which is usually mechanical energy is what's
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: produced right by a machine.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, so think about this, like, if you capture mechanical
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: energy like water spinning a turbine, which we'll talk about, yeah,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: and Niagara Falls, that's not going to do anything to
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: light your light bulb two hundred miles away.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: No, not by itself.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: No, unless you connect the two, you send the work
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: produced the energy captured in Niagara Falls down to your
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: light bulb. And that's what we do using electricity.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty simple. Actually, it seems complicated, but it's not. No,
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: just electrons moving around.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about electrons. Man, let's talk about the atom.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Well, should we talk about the history of this stuff? Yes,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: let's back in the olden days. In ancient times, there
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: were dudes messing around with energy and static electricity without
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: even knowing what they were doing. Right, they didn't understand it.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that they weren't playing around with.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: It, No, and getting zapped because they're messing with static electricity.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: That's right, which we'll explain all that later to But
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: there was one dude called Dallas of Melitas. He is
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: a philosopher in Greece and in six hundred BC he
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: is thought to have been the first dude to around
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: with electrostatics static electricity by rubbing amber with fur, and
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: he noticed that dust and feathers and things were attracted
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: to it. He didn't know what the heck was going on,
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: but he knew something.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Was up right, and the amber plays a pretty big role.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: It's actually amber. The Latin er I'm sorry is it Greek?
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Greek Greek word for amber is electron with a K.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: That was like.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: The way heavy metal.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, but that's so like our Our word
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: electricity is derived from the Greek word for amber. From
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: that first experiment with static electricity.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was actually coined by a dude named
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: William Gilbert. He was an Englishman, a physician, and he
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: was studying sort of the same things with static electricity
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: that Militis was. And he was the first person to
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: say it's electric when he saw these forces at work.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: With an exclamation point and his finger in the air. Yeah,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and we should probably we should probably differentiate, like there's
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a couple of types of electricity. There's static electricity, and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: then there's current electricity, right, and current electricity is what
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: we are able to generate artificially. Static electricity exists in
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: nature just naturally. Yes, and that was the first experiments
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: carried out. Then there's other types of current electricity like lightning.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: But at this time when these people are messing with
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: electric or static electricity or saying it's electric for the
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: first time, yeah, the concept electricity was that it was fluid.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Well, it was fluid. He was on the right track.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Something is flowing.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: But they thought it was literally a fluid which they
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: called which.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: In those days was called a humor.
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: And he said it leaves what he called then an
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: afflu vivvum effluvium, right, which is atmosphere around it. When
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: you create this rubbing action, it removes that fluid. But
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: it wasn't fluid. They were not dummies back then, but
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: they were just figuring it all out.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: No, they weren't dummies because even Ben Franklin thought it
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: was a fluid. It was the prevailing idea concept of electricity,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and Ben Franklin and a couple of his contemporaries, including
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: a guy named Thomas Francois Dalibard, were studying electricity big time,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and it was when they really investigated lightning that our
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: understanding of current electricity started to take shape.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the old story of Ben Franklin flying his kite
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: may or may not have happened. There are some people
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: that think that didn't happen now.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: But if he didn't do it, other people did. There
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: were guys who died carrying out that experiment. Yeah, but
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it was definitely carried out. I don't know if Ben
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Franklin did or not.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sort of the story that he flew the
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: kite with the key, and some people think it either
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: didn't go down like that or didn't go down with
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: him at all.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: But it's a great story either way.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think he at least proposed it the experiment.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was the first guy to say that
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: electricity has a positive and negative charge and that it
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: flows from positive to negative.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: So he's a smart guy, very smart.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: He's a polymn.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Then there was another smart dude named Coulomb, Charles Augustin
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: de Coulomb, and he is the one that wrote Coulomb's law.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: And he said, charges like charges repel, opposite charges attract,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: and that's kind of like the basis for it all.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the force of these charges is proportional to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: their product. So if you multiply the charges, they are
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: going to be very strong or canceled on another out
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: or push one another away.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: He basically said, you can now calculate this right because
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: of my handy dandy little law.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and with a boom, he said boom, not bang. Okay,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: that came earlier later on.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: A guy named J. J.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: Thompson in eighteen ninety seven said at a science conference, Hey,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: I found something smaller than the atom. And everyone said, silly, man,
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: atoms are invisible. You can't it even means invisible.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: You liar, And he said no, I promise it's there's
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: something smaller, it's got a negative charge, and I'm going
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: to call it a corpuscle.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: No he didn't.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is Latin for small bodies. And then I think,
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: I don't know who later said let's change it to electron.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds way cooler.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: But the discovery of the electron was basically the birth
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: of what we know is electricity today. Yeah, the understanding
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: of the electron is what it's all about.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And would you say, like eighteen ninety seven, yes, So
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: before that time, I guess he didn't understand the electron,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: but he understood electricity. A guy named Michael Faraday was
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: working on the.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Case stud Yeah.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Basically everybody's like Ben frank on electricity hand in hand.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Really it's Michael Faraday, who is British, who really came
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: to the foundation for electrifying the world. He just he
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: created the first dynamo, which is a generator which we'll
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: talk about.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: He first electric motor.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he just he got electricity and he explained
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: it to other people very well.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: Can you even fathom how smart these people were to
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: be that in the dark and figuring all this subatomic
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: stuff out.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Back then, hats off, top, Hats off to these guys.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Last chance garageot off.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm back on, Like I have trouble understanding it now,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: right when it's explained through like Kids for Science website,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Like inventing this, figuring this stuff out with the first time.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Right exactly.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: And it's a pretty dangerous field to try to figure
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: out blind too, you know.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean more than one scientist got a shock
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: from a Leyden jar. Oh yeah, and you can make those, dud?
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Did you make those in science class?
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: No?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can make those.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Well, it's we should say a leaden jar is a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: very primitive capacitor to use a metal rod in a jar,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: a nail that's sunk into like some water, and it
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: can store a charge. I think Ben Franklin's kite experiment
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: attached the kite to or a rod or something to
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a laden jar to store the charge too, if that happened, right,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: But again, he did make the proposal. It's whether or
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: not he carried it out as it's question.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: All right, I guess now we can get the atoms finally.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Atoms are very tiny and they make up molecules and
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: molecules make up everything you see.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, atoms are the building block of matter. That's right,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: an atam. Remember we're always talking about nature loves homeostasis,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Oh man does it? You've got a balance that nature
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: always seeks tries to achieve it. Same with atoms or
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: atoms are no exception. I should say within an atom,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: you have a nucleus which is made up of protons
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: and neutrons. Protons are positively charged particles, neutrons are neutral.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And then orbiting that nucleus making the cool atom symbol
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: are electrons and they're negatively charged. Right, And when you
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: have an equal number of protons to electrons, you have
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: a neutral atom.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no potential energy there. It's just in balance.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: And a lot of stuff is like that. A lot
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: of stuff is in balance, some stuff is not well.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Some stuff falls out of balance easier than other stuff.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the electrons sometimes they're super tightly bound to
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: the atom and they don't want to leave the house.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: They want to stick around. Sometimes they're crazy teenagers and
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: the slightest energy and movement makes them jump off from
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: the atom and just say I want to go attach
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: myself to something else.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: We go on rum Springer. Yeah, yeah, and it depends
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: on the material. And those types of material that have
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: either tightly connected or loosely connected atoms either end up
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: conducting electricity very well or don't conduct electricity very well,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: so they act as either electrical conductors or electrical insulators.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: Like, if you pick up a stick off the ground,
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: it's electrons like staying close to home, so it's not
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: going to conduct electricity. If you pick up a metal rod,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: those electrons are crazy loose and they like to go
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: off and do those things that teenage electrons do, and
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: therefore it does conduct electricity.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Right very well.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Under normal circumstances. When you pick up that rod or
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: you pick up that stick, the electrons are staying put
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: no matter what. But we figured out along the way
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: thanks to the work of all of the people, from
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the Greeks to Faraday, to Ben Franklin to your guy
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: with the core puscle idea. Yeah, JJ, what's his name, Yeah, JJ,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: core Puzzle, I think Thompson. So thanks to the work
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: of all of these people, we figured out how to
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: knock electrons loose. And it's ingenious and simple, but it's
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: also very complex, and it involves the relationship between magnetism
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and electricity. So Chuck, yes, we're talking about knocking electrons loose,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: which is ultimately the basis of producing electricity.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like when you were a kid in elementary school,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: you probably did the little balloon trick where you make
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: static electricity and make the balloon stick to your sweater.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: All you're doing, you're rubbing that balloon on your sweater,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: and electrons are jumping from that balloon onto your sweater.
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: And now there are two different charges going on. Because
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: you're overcharged, the balloon is now undercharged, and because opposite
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: it charges a tract it sticks to your sweater, right,
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: And that's static electricity.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: And static you know, you have static and dynamic, and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: dynamic indicates motion. Static indicates staying still, and they use
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: that to describe this type of electricity because the electrons
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: don't flow, they just sit there and wait for a connection.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Like when you touch something that's charged, like a door
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: knob after you've shuffled with your feet in socks over carpet.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: When you touch that door knob, you're forming that connection,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the balance is achieved once more,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and the electrons flow.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Like you're literally a conductor of electricity in that moment.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: So with current electricity, those electrons move, they move along
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a conductive material, say like copper wire or something like that.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: That's a hot one.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Right. So let's talk about how you produce an electrical current, right, Okay,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: let's talk about generators and turbines and all that awesome stuff.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: It sounds like you need to generate that electricity with
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: a generator, right.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I think that's what generators are called. That's why they're
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: called there.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny just how basic some of these things are.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Like you say, a compu tour.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Right, but but you just you've heard it so many
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: times you take it for granted and this is its meaning,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and it's like looking at a word too frequently.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think a lot of these words
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: are like that, like a generator or a core puzzle
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: or a what's it called when he stop down the electricity,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: which we'll get to transformer? Yeah, it transforms something. But
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: you say them so much, you're like, what's a transformer do?
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, I've been reading too much science for dummies,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: I think. All right, so generators, well, I guess it
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: all comes down to magnetism.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Yes, in the case of generators.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: And if you want to listen to two shows Lightning
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: and Magnetism before this one, it might help you understand
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: electricity a little.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Bit more, all right, So just go listen to those,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: well to do that right now, wait two hours. So
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: what I think Faraday figured out was that because of
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: this relationship between a magnet and electricity, you can take
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a magnet and you can move electrons in a say,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: conductive material. You can knock the electrons loose basically using
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a magnet.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like what happens when you attract a paper
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: clip to a magnet. It's just the transfer of electrons
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: jumping around.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And you create a flow by flipping the polarity. And
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you can do this by rotating metal right, Yeah, say
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: like a coiled copper within the two poles of a
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: large magnet. And when you do this, you're reversing polarity
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Yeah, and you are knocking the
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: electrons loose in those coils. And the way that you
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: spin the coils very quickly is by hooking the coils
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to say a shaft. Yeah, we kind of did this backwards.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Let's start at the beginning. You want to Okay, let's
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: go to Niagara Falls.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, back in eighteen ninety five George.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Westinghouse, who is Nikola Tesla's boss, Which, by the way,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: if you want to listen to another really good podcast,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: go listen to that one, Nikola Tesla one.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Remember it was all about the ac DC war between
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Tesla and Addison. Yeah, good episode, killed shocking animals. Yeah, yeah,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: it's pretty awful. But in eighteen ninety five, George Westinghouse
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: set up a hydro electric power plant along the Niagara Falls.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: And what he did was he had a means of
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: taking the movement of water, which is kinetic energy. The
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: water at the top of the falls has potential energy,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and then once it falls over, that potential turns to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: kinetic energy. Well, Westinghouse set up a turbine to catch
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: this movement of water, right, which is actual energy, and
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: have that movement spin a turbine, a propeller or a fan.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the same concept as an old gristmill, except
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: it's not creating energy. It's just moving the stones that
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: grind the wheat or corn.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Right, the gristmill is in this case it's capturing that
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: energy by or it's transferring it, we should say, by
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: converting that kinetic energy from the water into mechanical energy
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: spinning the turbine. The turbine is connected to that shaft
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I was talking about where we suddenly change course. And
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: at the end of that shaft, which is now spinning
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: thanks to the turbine, thanks to the movement of the water,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: is some coiled copper and that coiled copper is spinning
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: within those two magnets. Yeah, that's the key, right, And
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: because of that, the electrons are being knocked loose. You
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: have a power line leading from the coiled copper out
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have an electric current.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: And if you've ever been to the Hoover Dam or something,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: you don't have to have a waterfall or a river
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: to make this thing work. That's why they build dams.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: You stop up the water and then at the base
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: of the dam you have the means to release that
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: water and then it becomes that flowing water.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And then also for thermal power plants, they use nuclear
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: power to create a nuclear reaction to produce heat, or
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: they burn coal to produce heat, and then they use
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that heat to heat water, and then they use that
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: water to create steam, and then that steam turns a turbine.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: And these are all just different methods, whether it's solar
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: or steam or nuclear. I almost set it, which is
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: weird because I definitely don't say it that way.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Well, you were very excited.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: I think I said it enough as a joke that
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: it slips in. But anyway, all those are just means
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: to turn that turbine, right.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: And all it is is you're using that stored energy, yeah,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: or that kinetic energy like over here to create electricity
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: so that you can transfer it into you work down
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the line.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It's so cool.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: And this article we used a few different articles for
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: this one, like we said, including some science for kids websites,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: which by the way, I highly recommend.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, if you don't get something.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great place to go. Visit are these
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: kids websites because they break it down like super simply.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: But in our article, it.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: Describes a generator as if it was a water and
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: a pump, which made a lot of sense to me.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: The generator is the pump, but instead of pushing water
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: through a pipe, it's pushing electrons down a line power line.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: And that whole like using water as an analogy for
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: electricity fits very well.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you need something to push it. It's not
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: a self pusher, so you need that force, and that
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: force is voltage, right, Yeah, it's electromotive force.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: It's the same with water, like you have water pressure
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: that forces the water on the line, right, And with
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: electricity you have a force that moves electricity and it's voltage,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: like you said, measured in volts. Yeah, and the electrical
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: current is measured in amps. And the amps represent the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: total number of electrons flowing through any one point of
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: a circuit in any every second, and there's a lot
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: of them.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: And if you have voltage and you add that to current,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: which is amps, you get power, which is watts.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Right, and I think it's multiplied by it. Oh really,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: yeah it is.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Okay. I wasn't even thinking of it as a math formula.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: But it is. It is a math formula. And the
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: reason why it's a math formula is because they're related,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Like you can flip flop them, you can adjust them.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: And that's the whole basis of industrial power transmission that
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: which we'll get to later.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know it sounds a little confusing with
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: the volts, amps, and watts, but there are different Like
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: if you said, you know that guy was shocked and
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: he had one hundred and twenty volts coursing through his body,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: that's not true at all, because the vault is the
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: force he's got.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: He's got amps coursing through his body. Yeah, but you'd
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: be a huge geek to point that out to someone.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Someone said that, And a good rule of thumb is
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the higher the vaults, the more dangerous the shock. Yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: which is why in America most outlets and homes are
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: two or one hundred and twenty volts, where if you
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: touch it, you're gonna feel it, but it's probably not
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: going to kill you.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: In the United States it's one twenty. But it's different
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: in other countries.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Right, which is why like European appliance can't be plugged
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: into an American appliance because.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: You got to get those adapters.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So you were talking about current, which is the
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: number of electrons flowing through a circuit. You have the volts,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: which is the force or pressure that's pushing them down
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: the line, and then you have those two multiplied by
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: one another to create watts, which is power.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: You also there's one there's another factor to electrical currents,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and that is resistance.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we didn't talk about that, so we acted
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: like it was all either an insulator or conductor.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: But you can be a resistor, well, I mean everything,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Everything has a certain level of resistance.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you're an official resistor, that means current moves,
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: it just doesn't move like as fast as it might
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: end metal, right or not.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: At all as in wood.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or glass is another good resistor insulator yeah, and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: so is rubber. Yes, but even something is like conductive
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: as copper wire has a certain amount of resistance. And
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: again that water flowing analogy comes into place. Like if
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you pump like some water really really hard, Yes, try
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to get a lot of water through a very small pipe,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: it's still not going to come out very high, very
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: fast because you're trying to force too much water through
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that little pipe. So in the exact same way, a
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: thin wire where you're trying to push a lot of
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: amps through and a lot of volts through, it's going
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: to resist. And when you have resistance in an electrical circuit,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: you have what you lose some of those electrons that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: are flowing in the form of heat, which is produced
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: by electrons bumping up against other atoms that aren't sharing
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: their electrons, and that's the result of friction.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: And resistance is measured in ohms ohm. Should we talk
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: about circuits?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Are we there?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: So all this is well and good.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: That's you know, you can supply power and we'll talk
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: about this more in detail to homes from a power plant,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: but you can also have a little battery supplying that
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: electrical energy to a iPhone, let's say, right, And in
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: that case you need something called a circuit, which is
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: basically just a closed loop that allows the electrons to travel.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: And in most electronics it's like like you said, like
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: copper wire maybe, and it travels from you know, there's
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: a switch that turns it on and off, which is
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: why a.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Circuit is called a circuit breaker.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: Like if you break that circuit by turning the switch off,
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: or if the wire like snaps or something, it's gonna
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: no more electrons are going to be flowing.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Right, because there's and the reason they're not going to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: be flowing any longer is because the positive pole and
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the negative pole from that circuit are no longer connected,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: that's right. Another way to look at voltage is that
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: it is the difference between electrons on one side and
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: electrons on another side of a circuit. And remember we
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: talked about nature always wanting balance. Yeah, electrons flow from
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: negative to positive, right, that's right. And as they flow,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the reason they're flowing, the whole reason they're moving at
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: all is because there are not as many electrons on
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the positive side as there are on the negative side. Yeah,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: so they want to leave the negative side to go
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: achieve balance on the positive side and ultimately make whatever
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: circuit it's traveling neutral.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: You stick something in that circuit and as those electrons
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: are moving from the negative side to the positive side,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: because again, electricity is just the flow of electrons, yeah,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: you can convert that movement into productive work. Yeah, mechanical energy, right,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: And anything you attach onto a circuit to exploit that
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: flow of electrons for work is called the load.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: It could be a light bulb or you know whatever.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Whatever mechanical energy you're trying to create is your load.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Right, And there's all sorts of things you can do
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: by attaching a load to a circuit. Like a light bulb.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: A light bulb basically uses that electricity flow to flow
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: into a resistant filament, very thin wire that purposely resists
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: that flow of electricity, generating heat and in turn heating
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: up to produce light. That's how light bulb works.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: You can also recharge batteries which go in and force
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: electrons back into the negative position so that the batteries
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: recharged and those electrons are ready to flow again once
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: you connect the circuit. There's also appliances that use resistors
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: to produce heat, like hair dryer or a toaster. There's
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff you can do to connect into
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the circuit, but it's all the same whether it's a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: battery or a toaster or a whole house. If you
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: want to look at it that way, it's you're plugging
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a load onto an electrical circuit and exploiting the flow
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: of electrons.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I kind of misspoke a minute ago when
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: I said it's creating the mechanical energy.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: You need a motor to actually do that.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, if you have an electric drill, that's great
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: that you have electrons flowing, but it's not going to
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: turn anything unless you have that motor, and electric motor
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: is basically just a cylinder stuffed with magnets around the edge.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: And if you've ever used an electric drill and you
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: fire it up, when you look and see in the vents,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: you can actually see sparks.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: It's very cool.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: It's like those little guns you used to get at
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the circus when you're.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, god, I love those.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: So it's packed with those magnets around the edge, and
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: in the middle, you've got your core, which is, you know,
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: like an iron wire and it's wrapped around you know,
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: the coppers wrapped around the edges. So electricity flows to
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: that core, creates magnetism, and then that pushes against the
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: outer cylinder and makes that motor spin around, and then
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: that's where you get your mechanical energy.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Right, And an electric motor is probably the best example
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of how you're converting energy from one form to another, yeah,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and then reconverting it because an electric motor is basically
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: a generator in reverse. And so you use that mechanical
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: energy the spinning of the turbine down the line and
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: convert it in your electric drill back into mechanical energy
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: to spin the drill and in between, is that flow
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: of electrons that's causing the whole thing, or that's carrying
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: that energy from point A to point B. There's one
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: other thing if you look at a plug that you're
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: plugging an appliance into, because again you're just attaching a
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: load to that flow of electrons and diverting it through
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: your appliance and then it goes back on its merry way. Right.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: If you look at a plug, sometimes you'll see three prongs,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: and the third prong, the one on the bottom, seems
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: different from the other ones, that's round, and that is
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: actually a grounding wire.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Very important, very.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Very important, because as awesome as we've gotten with producing
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and directing electricity, we can't control the amount of electrons
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that flow through an outlet to down to a single electron,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and so there's such a thing as leakage of electrons,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: which is crazy. And there's also electrical build up that
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: can happen where if you're not using all of the
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: amps through an appliance, the residual amps can build up
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: and they charge the appliance. And again, as with static electricity,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a charge is just sitting there waiting to be neutralized,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: sometimes through you, which can make it very dangerous. To
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: prevent this, they have they connect the appliance through either
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: that third prong and a plug or through an actual
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: grounding wire to a copper wire that's driven into the ground.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: And that's where the word comes from ground actually transferring
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that residual electric energy to the ground, which is basically
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: an infinite reservoir for a charge dispersal to earth. Yeah.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: So like when you look at a power line and
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: you see that bare wire coming down from the power
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: line and driven into the ground by a stake that
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: is the ground, and it goes down like six or
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: ten feet.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: Or if you look at every house, you're going to
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: see near the meter, the electrical meter, you're going to.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: See a probably a copper rod driven into the ground,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: and that's your house is ground.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Exactly same thing with a lightning rod. It's a ground
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: for your entire house, so that the lightning doesn't go
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: through your house, it goes through the lightning rod. And
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: the point of all of those is that the earth
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: is it can take it. Go ahead, give it as
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: many electrical shocks as you want. It's gonna be fine,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: so we think, and it's a very good it's very
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: good at just dispersing those charges. So that's what grounding
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: comes from. Very important stuff.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we mentioned transformers earlier. Power plants create massive amounts
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: of electricity and you can't just shoot that down a
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: power line and straight into a house because it will
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: blow up everything in your in your home immediately. But
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: they do need that kind of juice in order to
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: transfer like hundreds of miles away from the power plant.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: You know, if you don't live close, it's still got
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: to get to you. So the way they do that
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: is through transformers. They transmit the power with a lot
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: of voltage, so more force, less amperage.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: Less resistance, less resistance, which means you lose less.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: And then once it you know, they stop it down
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: along the way and by the time it gets to
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: your home, it's transformed down to here in the United
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: States one hundred and twenty volts.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: More elsewhere, nice and safe, right, And then you just
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: plug your appliance into it and all of a sudden
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: that electrical energy transmits to your toast strude old being warmed.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: In your hot pocket with tainted meats.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Wow, did you hear about that? Yeah? Remember that whole
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: horse meat thing with Ikea the last couple of years.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just Ikea, but yeah, they were definitely called out,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: maybe most strongly for.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: I think the hot pockets too.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: They called it unsound meat, which is just a word
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: that sounds weird.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: In front of meat.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, unsound is not you don't want to go near it, unsound, unclean.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: It's biblical, all right.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: So now I think we, even though we've covered it
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: in the Tesla podcast, we do need to go over
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: ac DC a little.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Bit to go listen to that podcast. That's a great one,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: best episode, best Australian band of all time. Are they
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: were good?
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, are good?
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: David? Are they still around? Yeah? Man, David Bowie played
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: pretty mean Tesla.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not talking about test him home at ac DC.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, uh yeah, Tesla's all.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: Right, sure, and they're not around.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: That's why I was really confused. So I was more
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: confused about that than I was by any aspect of electricity.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, man, of course they're around anyone Australian.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, No, ac DC is great and they're still around.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: Huh yeah they're I think they're putting an album together
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: right now, give them form them.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I'll bet it sounds exactly like all the rest. It's
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: still rocks blues based rock uh in valure or velvet.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: So there was a battle being waged between Tesla and Edison,
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: and Tesla was all about the ac current alternating current. Edison,
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: as we know, said no, no, no, that's far too dangerous,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: and I'll prove this to you by electrocuting animals and
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: dogs and cats and even an elephant named Topsy.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And he was alleged to have helped botch the first
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: electric cution by electric chair by a state. Oh yeah,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: I don't remember the details of that, but it's definitely
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: in our episode.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: On Exploded the guy.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a real jerk.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Remember, Yeah, and I think we remember. I remember talking
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: about there should be a movie too about that that battle.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't believe there's not.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: It sounds super nerdy, but it would actually be interesting.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: It go over well these days, agreed.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: So batteries these days use direct current power DC power,
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: and that means the positive and negative terminals are always
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: positive and negative, and it always electricity always flows in
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: the same.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Direction from negative to positive.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does not alternate.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just think about it. This way negative and electrons negative. Yeah,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: so in any terminal, that's where all the negative charges
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: bad vibes, and then positive is where the electrons want
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: to be because they're seeking to balance it out and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: create neutral so that there's no poll good vibes, yeah,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: or the very least so so vibes, yeah, true, but
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: not negative vibes.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: No.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: And then you have alternating current or AC, which means
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: the current reverses sixty times per second here in the US,
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: fifty times per second in Europe. So it's just reversing
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: back and forth, alternating that current. And I guess, so
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: who went out in the end Tesla on a large scale.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean that's what our generation does.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Yeh. Edison has his batteries. I guess he could throw
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: it to.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Which are pretty important too. But yeah, I think we
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: kind of came out in the same way on that episode. Yeah,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: like this one, they both kind of won. Yeah, but
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Tesla was the cooler dude. Although Tesla died penniless in
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: New York in the nineteen forties. Oh yeah, and Edison
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: died of rich fat guy.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: He died of consumption and gout.
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: That has Ben Franklin I guess we can finish with.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: If you get your power bill and you're amazed and
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: you wonder how they calculate this stuff, it's pretty easy.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: Like we said here in the US, we deliver electricity
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: into your home at one hundred and twenty volts, So
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: you got to remember that one too.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: It's important.
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: Our article uses a space heater as an example, which
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: I think is pretty good. You plug in that space heater,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: let's say it's the only thing going in your house,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: which is not realistic, but go with me. You plug
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: in the space heater and it comes out to ten amps.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: So you multiply that ten times one hundred and twenty
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: because that's your voltage, and you have got twelve hundred
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: watts of heat.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Or one point two kill a watts.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Yes, because that's how the power company is going to
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: measure it, right, because they deal in big chunks.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: And if you leave that heater on for an hour,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: you've just used one point two kill a wat hours,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: which is how you're build.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and if they charge you a dime per kill
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: a what hour? It's going to cost you twelve cents
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: an hour to run that space heater?
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: Pretty simple? Yeap and neat.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: And that's why when you go to buy an appliance
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: you should look at that little tag that says how
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: many KILLO what hours you're going to be burning?
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, the lower the better, So electricity. Huh You
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: got anything else?
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: No, don't play around with it?
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: No, don't. Uh. Yes, I always wear rubber sold.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Huice because rubber is an insulator.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: It is why because it hangs on to its electron.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: That's right, the atoms that make up rubber.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: It's just that simple.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about electricity, you can
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: type that word in the search bart HowStuffWorks dot com.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: You can also go on all sorts of kids science
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: sites and find out more about it too. And since
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this rare birthday shout out.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Hey, guys, my name is Pearl, and I just want
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: to tell you how much a fan I am of
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: your show. I was introduced to the podcast by my
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: best friend Molly. We've been best friends for twelve years,
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: and many of our conversations begin by commenting on the podcast.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: For example, we could not stop laughing at your nineteen
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: twenties voice toward the end of the Underground Tunnels episode,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: we laughed over and over.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: That is a good voice.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: I think she's talking about this one. See that one. Yeah, Electricity,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: Tesla Edison killing animals. All right, that was for you,
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Molly and Pearl.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: Whenever we're in the car together, we find a podcast
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: of yours to listen to so we can enjoy it together.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: I was wondering if you could help her out. Molly's
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: twenty sixth birthday is April ninth. I think it would
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: be totally awesome birthday gift if you would send her
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: a shout out during listener mail, I would be forever
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: in your debt.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Thanks for doing the podcast.
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: I'm a middle school teacher who always listens during my
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: prep periods and so happy birthday Molly.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Happy twenty six This should be close.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, happy birthday to April ninth. That was very nice
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: of us, Chuck.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: And thank you Pearl Web in Chicago, and your friendship
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: means a lot to us.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: You know, your friendship with one another.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then conversely threw us all together in their car.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah, Well, if you want to get some sort
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: of shout out sometimes Chuck Danes too, He's very nice.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: You can send us an email to stuff Podcasts at
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.