Unit Blog Reflection

This unit we learned about electric currents and electric fields, including Ohm's law and Coulomb's law, which are I=V/R, and F= ke q1q2/r^2.  We also learned about electric fields, and what the diagrams portraying electric fields actually mean, which is that the arrows in the diagram  are the direction that a positively charged particle will go when placed into that electric field.  Besides that, we also learned about the different kinds of ways that an object can gain a static charge, which are through either friction, induction or .  Friction occurs when rubbing two objects together, induction occurs through polarizing an object and then drawing off the positive charges with another object, and .  After that we learned about electric currents, and that the electric charge in a current doesn't really flow through the wire (or whatever object is carrying the current), it needs to fill the entire thing at once, or else it can't flow at all.

This is an example of a simple electric circuit.  The battery is the source of the electric field, the switch exists to break the current and the lightbulb is the thing being powered by the current.

The different kinds of electrical circuits are called series circuits and parallel circuits.  Series circuits have everything on one wire, while parallel circuits have multiple wires independent of each other connected to the same source.  If one segment of line goes down in a series circuit, it shuts off the whole thing but for a parallel circuit any of them can be broken and not affect the others.

       This unit may be the one that effects our real lives the most, because everyone uses electricity.  It's good to understand how it actually works.  The things I had trouble with were mostly remembering the formula's, and in truth I still haven't quite got them down.  However, when I do it will mostly be through repetition.

Current Resource

This is a video from Khan Academy talking about circuits.  It is part of a series of 4 videos, but in this one he talks about current, resistance, and voltage.

Voltage Resource

This is a video of some maintenance workers playing with a power line.  In it, you can see how they are using heavily insulated suits, and still have electricity arcing from the power line to their hands.  You can hear the electricity moving through the air and it gives a very visual representation of an example of high amounts of current.