Science of Electricity – Video
Summary
The Science of Electricity video provides a foundational overview of the lesson. It explains how almost all of the world’s electricity is made by spinning a generator. It describes how heat from various sources like coal, natural gas, and nuclear power can be used to boil water, create steam, and spin a turbine that generates electricity.
Transcript:
[Dr. Scott W. Tinker] There are really only two ways to make electricity. This one uses silicon—like in a computer chip—to turn light into electricity. It’s pretty amazing, but it’s not very efficient and, therefore, it’s not very abundant. Only 1% of the world’s electricity comes from solar. The other 99% comes from generators. A generator is just magnets surrounding a core of coil wire, usually copper. And the coil turns within the generators and makes electricity, but the interesting part is how we turn it. Eighty percent of our electricity starts off as heat.Heat boils water. Water makes steam, and steam turns the turbine. We get this heat mostly from burning coal, natural gas, nuclear, oil, and, renewable sources like wood and geothermal. Sixteen percent of our electricity comes from water flowing through a dam, and a small but growing percentage comes from wind. For more than a century we’ve been powering the world by turning generators.