ELECTRICITY 101

If you haven't worked with electricity much, it can seem complicated. And scary. But in truth, it's just like any other field - someone just needs to lay it out with a little less overwhelming, complicated jargon. That's why we're here to simplify electricity so you won't get lost next time someone starts yapping about amps and ohms.

So...How Exactly Does Electricity Work?

Put simply, imagine electricity as a bunch of tiny, invisible super-fast runners (called electrons) running laps around a circular track, called a circuit. The runners start at some power source (like a battery), pass through things like light bulbs to make them work, and then return back to the start.

Buzzwords to Know

Unfortunately, there's still some jargon to know. But we'll try to keep it easy to understand.

Voltage

This is energy that gets our runners moving. More energy means they can go faster, power more things, and power them better.

Current

This is how many runners are on the track at one time. More runners mean more power to do things like toast bread or light up a room.

Amperage

This measures how many runners are on the track. The more runners, the more crowded, and the bigger the track you'll need.

Resistance

Sometimes, there are things in the way that can slow down our runners, not unlike hurdles on a track. This is called resistance.

Ohm

This is a way to measure how much of that resistance there is. More ohms mean it's harder for the runners to move.

Load

This is anything that needs electricity to work, like a toy or a TV. The runners have to work harder to make these things go.

Circuit

Remember the circular track our runners are on? That's the circuit. It always starts and ends in the same place.

Resistance

This is a rule to figure out how much push (voltage) you need to move a certain amount of runners (current) through past all of those hurdles (resistance).

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