Oh, wow, oh, oh, wow, oh, wow, oh, man.

Oh, my.

And so, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast, episode 57, electric current and circuits.

I'm your host, James Fodor.

In this episode, we're going to have a more detailed look at some basic electrical phenomena,

including electric current, voltage, resistance, and electric power.

And then we'll apply some of these the basic ideas to the analysis of circuits, including series and parallel circuits.

We'll also talk about some other more applied phenomena of electricity, including light bulbs, how they work, lightning, and why electricity can be dangerous.

Strongly recommend that you have listened to episode 43, electric forces and fields before you listen to this one, because I'll be assuming some basic understanding of what

electricity is and electric current, sorry electric charge and things like that. So let's jump straight in.

First of all, we'll look at basic electrical phenomena, starting with electron motion and electric fields.

So when we turn the switch on an electric circuit, an electric field is immediately felt by all of the

electrons or all of the charged particles. It doesn't have to be electrons, but usually it is,

along the circuit path. Now, I say immediately. Technically, the field propagates at the speed of light,

so it's only felt like the speed of light, but for most practical purposes, that's effectively

infinite from, you know, for short distances over the earth. So, basically, it's only felt like the speed of light, but for most practical purposes, that's effectively infinite from, you know, for short distances over the...

So, basically, it's felt immediately by all the electrons around the circuit.

However, in response to feeling that electric field, and remember if you don't know what an electric

field is, look back at episode 43, even before you turn on the field, electrons are constantly

jiggling around due to thermal motion, and then when you turn on the field, electrons are constantly jiggling around due to thermal motion.

And then when you turn on the field, that introduces a slight overall bias in this random motion of the electrons so that they move, they're still jiggling around and going all over the place.

But on average, they move slightly more in one direction in the direction in the field is pushing them than in the other direction.

...