6 Electricity today

Chapter 6 Electricity today The modern world depends on electricity to keep going. Many people use electricity every day, and you can buy thousands of different electrical gadgets.

Every year, scientists come up with amazing new inventions that use electricity. Surgical robots can carry out long, difficult and delicate operations. "Smart" ink can store an entire library of books on a single page. Cars can adapt to road and weather conditions.

The most important electrical appliances we use today are computers. The very first computers were built in the 1940s and they filled entire rooms. Now millions are made every year- some small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Inside a computer, there are thousands of tiny electronic circuits called microcircuits. Electrical currents carry signals around them at lightning speed. Close-up of a microcircuit Using the signals, computers can store and process all kinds of information, from complex mathematical calculations to pictures and music.

Computers control all kinds of things- such as planes, trains, traffic lights, bank machines and cash registers. I'll take it! Millions of computers linked together make up the Internet. People rely on the Internet to send and receive email messages and access useful information from all around the globe.

But computers only work if they have an electricity supply. Without electricity, the world would grind to a halt. That's exactly what happened on the East Coast of the United States in August 2003. The electricity supply went wrong and stopped. Nothing worked. No one knew what to do.