Electricity is a staple of modern life. Beyond lighting rooms and powering devices, electricity is pretty interesting! Here are some fun and interesting facts about electricity.
Interesting Facts About Electricity
- Electricity travels at the speed of light — more than 186,000 miles per second.
- Coal is the world’s biggest source of energy for producing electricity. Coal is burned in furnaces that boil water.
The steam from the boiling water then spins turbines that are attached to generators. - Electric fields work in a similar way to gravity. Whereas gravity always attracts, electric fields can either attract or repulse.
- Thomas Edison invented more than 2,000 new products, including almost everything needed for us to use electricity in our homes: switches, fuses, sockets and meters.
- Benjamin Franklin didn’t discover electricity, but he did prove that lightning is a form of electrical energy.
- Although electricity is neither a renewable nor non-renewable source of energy, it often comes from both renewable and non-renewable sources.
- When two charged objects are brought near each other, they either attract or repel each other which generate electrical energy.
- The two types of electrical charge in electrical energy are positive and negative.
- Electricity can be made from wind, light, water and even animal manure.
- Iceland is the first and only country to date which relies solely on renewable sources for electricity.
- It is a little-known fact that only ten percent of the traditional light bulb is used for actual lighting. The other 90% of the energy creates heat.
- The difference between AC (Alternating Current) and DC is in the way the electrons flow. With DC electrons move in a single direction, while in AC, electrons constantly switch direction. AC is what we use in most homes, as it is much safer and it used over longer distances than DC can.
- Alessandro Volta was the one who discovered that when two strips of different metals were placed in sulfuric acid and connected to a simple wire, electricity flowed. Thus, he invented the first electric battery.
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