Electricity

Back in the day, everyone wondered if there would be an easier way for us to do things. They wondered if there would be simpler ways in which we could wash our clothes, communicate, travel, and entertain ourselves. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin decided he would fly a kite which had a metal key tied to it during a thunderstorm. As a result of his curious action, he was able to determine the connection between electricity and lightning. And because of that, more people conducted other experiments to find out more about electricity. Causing them to invent many things. Now, we have washing machines, television, phones, laptops, iPads, and even AI. all made from electricity. And we couldn’t last a day without them.

I was a curious kid. When I was five, I poked a fork into an outlet. I don’t know why; I just did. When I was taking it out, I saw a blend of gold and purple sparks like tiny stars in the outlet. “Pretty”, I thought to myself, fascinated, just as I put the fork back into the outlet. That was definitely not the best choice. At that very moment, the world seemed to be going in slow motion. The sparks were no longer in the outlet but coming right towards me.

I felt a shock, and suddenly there was a sharp pain in the hand I was holding the fork. To my surprise, my five-year-old self didn’t even shed a tear. Instead, I was lost, staring directly at the outlet, mesmerised as I wondered to myself, “how”. I told my father about what happened, and he only gave me one word as the answer, “electricity”, he said. And then, a question formed in my brain. “How was electricity discovered?”

How it was discovered was actually really similar to the thing I did, considering my level of curiosity. In 1752, a guy named Benjamin Franklin, who today is widely known as the founding father of the United States, but back then was just a normal person who decided he would fly a kite during a thunderstorm. That probably was not the best decision he had made or the best way to do it. He had tied a metal key to the kite and flew it just to prove that lightning was electricity.

Now you might be thinking, how does that work? The literal answer would always be atoms. Atoms and electrons. Atoms are the tiniest particles in the universe, and they’re built up of neutrons, protons and electrons. While protons have a positive charge, neutrons have a neutral charge, and as you can guess, electrons have a negative charge. Meaning when protons and neutrons are attracted, electricity is created. Summed up, electricity is generated whenever we move electrons around.

That day my father mentioned the word ‘electricity’ to me. I've always wondered what it meant, but I never got to actually figure it out until now. In all honesty, I always thought it meant lightning because the sparks I saw looked exactly like it. Turns out I was not exactly wrong. Electricity means energy formed from existent charged particles, which is kind of hard to understand. So in simpler words. Energy from charged particles. It is the same as the other one because it cannot be changed. It will forever remain the same.

“Dangerous?” I asked my father when he explained that poking a fork in an outlet was probably one of the stupidest things I have ever done and that I’d done a lot of stupid things. “Yes.” He replied and shook his head. I wondered why until the 4th grade, when I learned that It could travel through our bodies through one touch.

References:

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/what-is-electricity/all
https://www.universetoday.com/82402/who-discovered-electricity/
https://www.britannica.com/summary/electricity
https://www.britannica.com/science/atom
https://www.britannica.com/science/neutron
http://www.solar365.com/green-homes/electrical/how-do-electrons-work

Author Biography

Saira Saeed was born in the Maldives. She enjoys swimming, and every day she tries her best to make her dream of getting selected for the national squad become a reality. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and cooking for her friends and family. Most books that she reads are mystery, thriller, romance and fantasy. Her main goal is to finish her studies at a good college such as Stanford University and go into culinary school and later open her own restaurant.

Cite this article as:

Aminath Saira Saeed, Electricity, theCircle Composition, Volume 2, (2022). https://thecirclecomposition.org/electricity/