4 Useful electricity

Chapter 4 Useful electricity Just think what we could do with this power! Once people knew how electricity worked, and how to make it, they started thinking about how to use it. All kinds of useful electrical inventions began to appear.

The most important inventor was Michael Faraday, who worked on electricity in England in the 1830s. Faraday was particularly interested in how electricity and magnets could work together. Let's see if this works.

He put a magnet in a dish of mercury, close to a wire with an electric current flowing through it. The wire moved in a circle around the magnet. This wire is attached to the battery. This wire is tree to move. Magnet Mercury conducts the electricity. Battery

Faraday's experiment led to two very important inventions- the motor and the generator. A motor turns electricity into movement. You can see how it works in a modern electric fan. 1. Electricity flows along a wire into the fan. 2. Inside the fan, a motor uses a magnet to turn the electricity into spinning energy. Motor Belt 3. The motor turns a small wheel, attached to a belt, attached to the fan blades.

There are motors in all kinds of electrical appliances today. In a breadmaker, a motor makes a paddle turn around to mix the dough. A motor spins CDs inside a CD player. A motor makes the drum turn in a washing machine. There's even a tiny motor in an electric toothbrush.

A generator works in the opposite way to a motor. It changes movement, such as the turning of a windmill, into electricity. Wind makes windmill blades spin around. Generator The generator turns this spinning energy into electricity. Then the electricity is carried away along power lines to be used. Power lines Most of the electricity we use is produced by generators. They can be driven by wind, water, gas, steam or nuclear power.