Copy of Lesson 1 Recorded

Hi everyone. I'm mrs Guterres and I work for riverside public utilities.

You might not know what a utility company does,

but you actually work with the utility company most days

and that's because any time you watch television, use your computer,

charge your phone or do anything that requires the use of electricity.

It's a utility company that usually sends you that electric energy.

And so here in the city of riverside California,

riverside public utilities is that utility company,

we also do water, send water as well through the pipes.

But we're here to talk about electricity and electricity is a really big topic.

My job here is to teach people about these essential services.

So for the next few days we're going to be

working together to learn about the science of electricity.

We're gonna start by trying to answer that

question you see on your screen which is what

is electricity?

In order to answer that question, we have to go back a little bit,

probably in third grade you learned about matter.

So we know that everything that takes up space

and has weight

is matter. So all the things that we see and feel in touch, that's all matter.

And all matter is made up of these tiny little ingredients called atoms.

Atoms are the smallest ingredient in every kind of matter.

And when I say smallest, I'm not kidding,

atoms are so small. In fact that the human eye can't see them.

We don't have any technology, no microscopes, telescopes,

nothing strong enough to visually with our eyes be able to see

an atom,

not only that they're really fast.

Even if we could

see something that little,

they move so quickly

that our eyes would never find them.

In fact they move nearly the speed of light it Times. So they're super fast.

Let's look closely at these models because we don't

have the ability to see an actual atom.

Scientists over the years have developed these models.

So the model that you seek in the middle

was developed in 1913 by a scientist named Niels Bohr

so they call it the boars model atom and that's probably the

one you're more familiar with if you've seen these models before.

So let's talk about this. And what it has to do with the electricity

in the center of the atom,

you can see little particles.

Now the center has a very fancy science name and it is called the nucleus.

So it's a location on the atom.

The nucleus has these other particles, these sub atomic particles just pieces.

And there's more than one kind.

So you can see, let's talk about the subatomic particle that's red

and it has a little white

plus sign on it.

So a plus sign is used in science and math to indicate something that

is positive and that's because that particle has a small energy charge to it.

And scientists named that charge

positive.

So the name of the particle

is proton. So a proton is in the nucleus and it has a positive charge.

Now,

you'll see that there's a second particle in there

that does not have a positive sign on it.

That's because it doesn't have an energy charge that's positive.

In fact it doesn't have any charge at all.

We say that that particle is neutral, it has no charge to it. So it is neutral.

And the name of that particle is neutron. So a proton is a

positive and a neutron

is neutral.

And since that neutron doesn't have a charge,

I don't really have to worry a lot about about it in my explanation today because

it doesn't really have the energy charge or

the electrical charge that the other particle has.

But that's not the only particle that has a charge.

The proton with its positive charge. Let's look closer.

There's another subatomic particle

and it's on the outside of the nucleus.

The name of this particle is

the electron

sounds a lot like electric and you notice

it has a minus sign on it.

So the minus sign

indicates the exact opposite kind of charge as the proton.

So

the electron has a negative charge to it. So

electrons are negatively charged.

They are outside of the nucleus

spinning around the center. Really fast.

Protons are inside the nucleus and have a positive charge.

Mhm.

Here's another set of

atomic models or models of atoms.

It's interesting because you can see that how

what determines what kind of an atom it is

is the number of protons in the nucleus. So let's look at these two.

First, I have two different kinds of metal atoms,

copper and silver

in the copper atom. I can see it says P 29. That means there are 29

positive protons

on the inside on the nucleus,

there's 35 neutral neutrons. But I'm not so worried about that in silver.

To be a silver atom,

there has to be 47 positive protons in the nucleus.

Now, here's another thing that's kind of interesting about an atom.

So there are sort of laws and physics just like we have the

law of gravity and that law is never broken on our planet.

If I drop a paperclip, it's gonna fall down. It's not gonna zoom up into the air.

Right?

So one of the laws in physics is that

atoms in there Natural state stay neutral or balanced.

That means that if there are 29 positive

protons inside the nucleus of the copper atom,

there also needs to be 29 negative electrons on the outside of the nucleus. So

they're organized in these rings or they call these valence shells.

So looking at that copper atom,

the first valence shell has two

electrons in it.

That's the most any valence shell can have in its first ring

in the second valence shell, the most electrons that there can be are eight.

Well that's not enough. I need 29.

So I have to in the first eight in the second, That's 10.

So I need another valence shell.

The third valence shell on any

atom on any atom you can have up to 18 electrons but not more.

So 18 and eight and two that's going to equal 28.

I need one more valence shell so that I can have that last electron.

And that's going to give me 29.

The same thing happens if you look at the silver atom,

let's see if I can assume 47 protons.

So I have two negative electrons in that first valence shell.

That's what I'm allowed to have.

Eight in the second. And it keeps

Growing

and each has its allotted number of electrons until I get to that final one,

number 47 winds up being all alone.

And so here's what happens when electrons are in an outer shell by themselves.

They lose control easily.

So it's not hard for something to interrupt that

electron that's in that outer shell and cause it to

leave the atom.

If it leaves the atom, we have a problem because I have 29 positive protons,

29 negative electrons.

And one of those electrons

takes off. So now I have too many protons because one of my electrons left.

So I have a positive charge in my atom. That's not natural.

And so a force is going to cause that atom to

try and seek another electron to balance it out again.

So,

any time we have a material that's made of

atoms with these outside shells and only one electron,

it's very easy to disrupt those and cause them to move.

Now here's a different kind of atom. This one is called silicon.

You can see in that outer valence shell, those electrons are not alone,

they're partnered up and there are four of them.

And in this state this does not allow electricity to easily move through it.

Not the same way that silver and copper will.

So when we have an atom that is allowing all of those electrons to easily be moved,

this is what happens.

We have that free electron out there.

It's free because it's not on an atom, but it can't stay free.

It's gonna join the orbit on the valence shell of that atom nearby.

But if that adam was already full, that

electron is gonna make it overly full. That can't happen.

It needs to be balanced so it's going to get kicked off.

The force will kick it off, It'll join another nearby atom.

And if that adam doesn't need it,

it's going to get kicked off again and so it goes on and on.

So you can kind of see that happening here

and they call that a current of electricity.

So here it is in the graphic, you can see them moving from one atom to another.

Imagine if they were doing that thousands of miles per second.

You wouldn't even see a blur of it. It would be so fast.

So that is what a current of electricity is.

So electricity comes from electrons that are out of balance, right?

Because they're neutral.

If there's the same number of them when they're out of balance,

then we have a charge and they start to travel in a current.

Now we said that some atoms like copper and

silver allow that free movement much more easily.

We call those

kinds of materials conductors.

Copper as a conductor, silver is a conductor, so is water,

water is a conductor because water has salt and minerals in it.

You rarely in your life will ever if ever come across 100% pure water.

All water has something in it and that's what conducts

the human body is mostly made of water. So it conducts as well.

But then there are other things like glass and wool and plastic that do not conduct.

So we say that those are insulators.

So there are conductors and there are insulators.

Now that sill silicon is kind of special because silicon is found in sand,

They use it to make class and in its natural state it is an insulator.

But if you heat it up you can disrupt those electrons.

And so it will conduct if it's heated up and then

they call it a semiconductor it conducts some of the time.

So this is a lot of information, let's see what you can remember.

Look at the first statement which statements are true.

Electricity is a natural phenomenon.

Electricity is one type of energy.

Electricity is the movement of electrons between atoms.

Electricity is the flow

of electric charge

due to an imbalance.

Which one of those is true

actually, they're all true. Those are all true statements.

So electricity isn't just one thing, right?

We know what it's made of and we know how it can behave. There's a lot more to it.

And that's where

we're going to spend several days talking about it.

I want to talk to you a little bit about the science kits that you should have.

So you just learned about things that will conduct,

allow energy to flow through and things that will insulate.

Keep energy from flowing through easily.

So in your science kit, you have a battery and you have bulbs.

What we're gonna do is we're going to take these

two wires on the battery and on the bulb.

Now, I want to make sure that I can get them connected to each other,

the two conductors.

The two wires,

I don't want to wrap around the plastic

because the electricity doesn't travel through that plastic.

Right?

So now I have my I have my light bulb connected to my battery,

but there's no light because those electrons

aren't traveling just yet until I make this connection.

We'll talk about this a little more later too.

But look how fast they get there as soon as I touch. They're already there.

They leave the battery and travel thousands of miles per second.

Right to that, right to that light bulb.

Okay, what you're gonna be doing today after our class is testing

the items in your material bag to see if they are conductors or if they are

insulators.

Is my paper a conductor or an insulator? Well, it's

an insulator because

and the proof of that is the evidence is that

there's no electricity flowing through the paper to light up my

light bulb. So you're gonna work on conductors and insulators today.

All you need is your one light bulb.

You have to you just need one your materials

back to test those items and your battery pack.

And I will see you again

the next lesson.

Bye for now.

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