Electricity is one of the pillars of modern civilization. Life without electricity, of course, is possible, because our not-so-distant ancestors did just fine without it. "I will light everything here with Edison and Swann bulbs!" Shouted Sir Henry Baskerville from Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, seeing for the first time the bleak castle he was to inherit. But the yard was already at the end of the 19th century.
Electricity and its associated progress have provided humanity with unprecedented opportunities. It is almost impossible to list them, they are so numerous and global. Everything that surrounds us is somehow made with the help of electricity. It is difficult to find something unrelated to it. Living organisms? But some of them generate significant amounts of electricity themselves. And the Japanese have learned to increase the yield of mushrooms by exposing them to high voltage shocks. The sun? It shines by itself, but its energy is already being processed into electricity. Theoretically, in some particular aspects of life, you can do without electricity, but such a failure will complicate and make life more expensive. So you need to know electricity and be able to use it.
1. The definition of electric current as a stream of electrons is not absolutely correct. In battery electrolytes, for example, current is the flow of hydrogen ions. And in fluorescent lamps and photo flashes, protons, together with electrons, create current, and in a strictly regulated ratio.
2. Thales of Miletus was the first scientist to pay attention to electrical phenomena. The ancient Greek philosopher reflected on the fact that an amber stick, if rubbed against wool, begins to attract hairs, but he did not go further than reflections. The term "electricity" itself was coined by the English physician William Gilbert, who used the Greek word "amber". Gilbert also did not go further than describing the phenomenon of attracting hairs, dust particles and scraps of paper with an amber stick rubbed on wool - Queen Elizabeth's court doctor had little free time.
Thales of Miletus
William Gilbert
3. Conductivity was first discovered by Stephen Gray. This Englishman was not only a talented astronomer and physicist. He demonstrated an example of an applied approach to science. If his colleagues limited themselves to describing the phenomenon and, as a maximum, published their work, then Gray immediately made a profit from conductivity. He demonstrated the number “flying boy” in the circus. The boy hovered over the arena on silk ropes, his body was charged with a generator, and shiny golden petals were attracted to his palms. The courtyard was a gallant 17th century, and “electric kisses” quickly came into fashion - sparks jumped between the lips of two people charged with a generator.
4. The first person to suffer from an artificial charge of electricity was the German scientist Ewald Jürgen von Kleist. He constructed a battery, later called the Leyden jar, and charged it. While trying to discharge the can, von Kleist received a very sensitive electric shock and lost consciousness.
5. The first scientist who died in the study of electricity was a colleague and friend of Mikhail Lomonosov. Georg Richmann. He ran a wire from an iron pole installed on the roof into his house and examined electricity during thunderstorms. One of these studies ended sadly. Apparently, the thunderstorm was especially strong - an electric arc slipped between Richman and the electricity sensor, killing the scientist who was standing too close. The famous Benjamin Franklin also got into such a situation, but the face of the one hundred dollar bill was lucky to survive.
Death of Georg Richmann
6. The first electric battery was created by the Italian Alessandro Volta. Its battery was made of silver coins and zinc discs, the pairs of which were separated by wet sawdust. The Italian created his battery empirically - the nature of electricity was then incomprehensible. Rather, scientists thought they understood it, but they thought it wrong.
7. The phenomenon of the transformation of a conductor under the action of a current into a magnet was discovered by Hans-Christian Oersted. The Swedish natural philosopher accidentally brought the wire through which the current was flowing to the compass and saw the deflection of the arrow. The phenomenon made an impression on Oersted, but he did not understand what possibilities it conceals in itself. André-Marie Ampere fruitfully researched electromagnetism. The Frenchman received the main buns in the form of universal recognition and the unit of current strength named after him.
8. A similar story happened with the thermoelectric effect. Thomas Seebeck, who worked as a laboratory assistant at one of the departments at the University of Berlin, discovered that if you heat a conductor made of two metals, then a current flows through it. Found it, reported it, and forgot. And Georg Ohm was just working on the law, which will be named after him, and used the work of Seebeck, and everyone knows his name, unlike the name of the Berlin laboratory assistant. Ohm, by the way, was fired from his post as a school physics teacher for experiments - the minister considered setting up experiments as a matter unworthy of a real scientist. Philosophy was in fashion then ...
Georg Ohm
9. But another laboratory assistant, this time at the Royal Institute in London, greatly upset the professors. Michael Faraday, 22, has worked hard to create the electric motor of his design. Humphrey Davy and William Wollaston, who invited Faraday as laboratory assistants, could not stand such impudence. Faraday modified his motors already as a private person.
Michael Faraday
10. The father of the use of electricity in domestic and industrial needs - Nikola Tesla. It was this eccentric scientist and engineer who developed the principles of obtaining alternating current, its transmission, transformation and use in electrical devices. Some people believe that the Tunguska catastrophe is the result of Tesla's experience in instantaneous transmission of energy without wires.
Nikola Tesla
11. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Dutchman Heike Onnes managed to obtain liquid helium. For this, it was necessary to cool the gas down to -267 ° C. When the idea was successful, Onnes did not give up the experiments. He cooled the mercury to the same temperature and found that the electrical resistance of the solidified metallic liquid dropped to zero. This is how superconductivity was discovered.
Heike Onnes - Nobel Prize Laureate
12. The power of an average lightning strike is 50 million kilowatts. It would seem like a burst of energy. Why are they still not making attempts to use it in any way? The answer is simple - the lightning strike is very short. And if you translate these millions into kilowatt-hours, which express energy consumption, it turns out that only 1,400 kilowatt-hours are released.
13. The world's first commercial power plant gave current in 1882. On September 4, generators designed and manufactured by Thomas Edison's company powered several hundred homes in New York City. Russia lagged behind for a very short time - in 1886, a power plant, located right in the Winter Palace, began to work. Its power was constantly increasing, and after 7 years 30,000 lamps were powered by it.
Inside the first power plant
14. Edison's fame as the genius of electricity is greatly exaggerated. He was undoubtedly an ingenious manager and the greatest in R&D. What is only his plan for inventions, which was actually carried out! However, the desire to constantly invent something by the specified date also had negative sides. The “war of currents” between Edison and Westinghouse with Nikola Tesla alone cost consumers of electricity (who else paid for black PR and other related costs?) Hundreds of millions of those backed by gold dollars. But along the way, the Americans received an electric chair - Edison pushed through the execution of criminals with alternating current in order to show its danger.
15. In most countries of the world, the nominal voltage of electrical networks is 220 - 240 volts. In the United States and several other countries, 120 volts are supplied to consumers. In Japan, the mains voltage is 100 volts. The transition from one voltage to another is very expensive. Before World War II, there was a voltage of 127 volts in the USSR, then a gradual transition to 220 volts began - with it, losses in networks decrease by 4 times. However, some consumers were switched to a new voltage as early as the late 1980s.
16. Japan went its own way in determining the frequency of the current in the electrical network. With a difference of a year for different parts of the country, equipment for frequencies of 50 and 60 hertz was purchased from foreign suppliers. This was back at the end of the 19th century, and there are still two frequency standards in the country. However, looking at Japan, it is difficult to say that this discrepancy in frequencies somehow influenced the development of the country.
17. The variability of voltages in different countries has led to the fact that there are at least 13 different types of plugs and sockets in the world. In the end, all this cacophony is paid for by the consumer who buys adapters, brings different networks to the houses and, most importantly, pays for losses in wires and transformers. On the Internet, you can find many complaints from Russians who moved to the United States that there are no washing machines in apartment buildings in apartments - they, at most, are in a shared laundry somewhere in the basement. Precisely because washing machines need a separate line, which is expensive to install in apartments.
These are not all types of outlets
18. It would seem that the idea of a perpetual motion machine, which had died forever in Bose, came to life in the idea of pumped storage power plants (PSPP). The initially sound message - to smooth out daily fluctuations in electricity consumption - was brought to the point of absurdity. They began to design PSPs and try to build even where there are no daily fluctuations or they are minimal. Accordingly, cunning comrades began to overwhelm politicians with enchanting ideas. In Germany, for example, a project to create an underwater pumped storage power plant in the sea is being considered this year. As conceived by the creators, you need to submerge a huge hollow concrete ball under water. It will fill with water by gravity. When additional electricity is needed, the water from the ball will be supplied to the turbines. How to serve? Electric pumps, of course.
19. A couple more controversial, to put it mildly, solutions from the field of unconventional energy. In the US, they came up with running shoes that generate 3 watts of electricity per hour (when walking, of course). And in Australia there is a thermal power plant that burns a nutshell. One and a half tons of shells are converted into one and a half megawatts of electricity in one hour.
20. Green energy has practically driven the unified Australian power system to a state of "gone bad". The shortage of electricity, which arose after the replacement of TPP capacities with solar and wind power plants, led to its rise in price. The rise in price has led Australians to install solar panels on their homes, and wind turbines next to their homes. This will further unbalance the system. Operators have to introduce new capacities, which requires new money, that is, new price increases. The government, on the other hand, subsidizes every kilowatt of electricity it gets in the backyard, while imposing unbearable fees and demands on traditional power plants.
Australian landscape
21. Everyone has known for a long time that the electricity received from thermal power plants is “dirty” - CO is emitted2 , greenhouse effect, global warming, etc. At the same time, ecologists are silent about the fact that the same CO2 It is also generated during the production of solar, geothermal, and even wind energy (for its production, very non-ecological substances are needed). The cleanest types of energy are nuclear and water.
22. In one of the cities of California, an incandescent lamp, which was turned on in 1901, is continuously lit in a fire department. The lamp with a power of only 4 watts was created by Adolphe Scheie, who tried to compete with Edison. The carbon filament is several times thicker than the filaments of modern lamps, but the durability of the Chaier lamp is not determined by this factor. Modern filaments (more precisely, spirals) of incandescence burn out when overheated. Carbon filaments in the same situation simply give out more light.
Record-holder lamp
23. An electrocardiogram is called electrical not at all because it is obtained with the help of an electrical network. All muscles of the human body, including the heart, contract and generate electrical impulses. The devices record them, and the doctor, looking at the cardiogram, makes a diagnosis.
24. The lightning rod, as everyone knows, was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1752. But only in the city of Nevyansk (now the Sverdlovsk region) in 1725 the construction of a tower with a height of more than 57 meters was completed. The Nevyansk tower was already crowned with a lightning rod.
Nevyansk tower
25. More than a billion people on Earth live without access to household electricity.
