BASIC ELECTRONICS - Useful and fun info

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Basic Electronics

Hello, here you can find knowledge that will be needed in order to start working with electronics! The following information won't address you as engineers, scientists or technicians, but as artists and designers.

What is Electricity?

Electricity seems to be both familiar and yet abstract. Its quite hard to imagine. In order imagine electricity, there an analogy with water is often used.

Electricity is an essential ingredient of matter. Sounds poetic, doesn't it? So to picture it, lets zoom deep in and look at the smallest component of every element - the atom.

Atoms are made of even smaller particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons and neutrons are packed tightly together in the middle of the atom, and we call them the nucleus of the atom. The electrons orbit around the nucleus. Protons and electrons have electrical charges. Protons have a positive charge, and electrons have a negative charge (neutrons don't have any charge). Normally an atom has equal numbers of protons and electrons, so they cancel each other and the atom has no electrical charge. Sometimes an electron does escape from its atom and runs off to join another atom.

Atoms with escaped electrons is positively charged and respectively, if electrons jump into atoms and become more, then the atom is negatively charged.

Free atoms can move freely (almost with the speed of light) trough metals, gases and vacuum. Or they can rest.

The surface that electrons are resting is said to have negative static electrical charge. If atoms are missing some electrons then it is said to be positive static electrical charge.

Current, Voltage, Power, Resistance

So anytime electrons move, we have current! Electrons can travel trough some materials but not trough others. The ones that allow electrons to flow are called Conductors (silver, gold, iron, copper..etc.) and the ones that do not really allow the free flow of electrons are called Insulators ( wood, plastic, rubber..etc.)

Electrical current can flow in either of two directions in a conductor. If it flows only in one direction, then it is called DC ( Directional Current). We will work with it and so the following information concerns DC.

CURRENT (I) - is the quantity of electrons passing at a given point. The unit is the AMPERE, shortly called AMP. If we compare it with water, think of it as the flow , passing trough the pipes.

VOLTAGE (V or E) - is electrical pressure or force. If we now compare it with water running through pipes, then Voltage is the pressure in the pipes.

The higher the pressure, the higher the flow and vice versa.

POWER (P) - is the work performed by an electrical current. It is measured in WATT. The power of a DC current is its voltage(V), times its current(I).

RESISTANCE (R) - is the conductor's (material’s) tendency to resist the current. Some materials allow more current to flow and others not. Going back to water, resistance is how narrow the pipe is. It is measured in OHMS (Ω).