Electricity is a kind of energy that can help us make things like lights, running fans, and heating our homes. It can also power vehicles, industrial machines, and medical equipment.
You cannot imagine a world without electricity! It’s one of the most important blessings that science has given to mankind. It has been used to make life easier and more convenient.
We need electricity for all our everyday needs: from lighting our houses, to running our cars, to working the refrigerators in our kitchens and washing clothes. Electricity is not only essential for our well-being but also plays an important role in our economy and helps the planet.
Creating and delivering electricity to our homes, offices, and factories is done by generators in industrial plants called power plants. They use fuels such as coal, natural gas, or petroleum to turn atoms into electrons.
Once these electrons are produced, they must be sent down many miles of wires to get to the homes, offices, and factories that need them. It is this long distance that can waste up to two thirds of the energy in the fuels.
The other third of the energy in these fuels is turned into heat, which is another form of energy. It can be made into steam by burning fuels or by nuclear reactions, which produce a lot of heat.
These steams are sent to large electric generators, which are much larger than your house’s bicycle. These large generators are powered by huge wheels that turn rapidly, generating electricity.
In the United States, the largest share of electricity is derived from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. About two-thirds of all electricity is generated from these fuels. The rest is derived from nuclear, hydropower, and wind power.
A key way to understand electricity is to revisit the atom, and realize that it consists of free electrons that keep moving around. A leaf, a plastic cup, and your pet all have electrons in them.
We need electricity to create the light that we see in our world and to help us play music or lift our cars, which are powered by a battery. If we did not have electricity, we would need to run our cars on gasoline or start a fire to cook food.
Getting electricity to your house is not so easy. The energy has to travel all the way from the power plant that makes it, down a big cable to your home. If you live in a very densely populated area, the energy might take hours to arrive, which might not be convenient for your family or you.
It is hard to predict what the future will bring when it comes to bringing more and more energy sources into our lives. The future will also have to involve more research into how we can use these sources to make sure that they don’t pollute our air, soil, and water.
A great example of how we can reduce the pollution and greenhouse gases that electricity can cause is to choose renewable forms of energy. The use of renewables like hydropower and solar power can help reduce our environmental footprint.