FUNDAMENTALS OF ELECTRICITY

Electrical charge
- Before discussing electricity, it's important to first understand electrical
charge because electricity is simply the movement and accumulation of electrically
charged particles. If you've ever been shocked when you touch a doorknob after
shuffling across the carpet on a dry day then you've felt the effect of electrical
charge. Hundreds of years ago, some clever scientists noticed that when they rubbed
certain objects together, it would cause those objects to either attract or repel each
other. For example, when I rub this balloon on a wool scarf, they become attracted to
each other and they stick together. The cause of this strange phenomena remained a
mystery for a really long time but eventually, the scientists realized that the reason the
scarf and balloon are attracted to one another after being rubbed together is because
the friction creates an imbalance of electrical charge between those objects. All objects
are made of tiny little building blocks called atoms which are way too small to see and
each of those atoms consists of three types of even tinier little particles called
protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and electrons are particles which have equal
and opposite electrical charges. We say that protons are positively charged and that
electrons are negatively charged. The neutrons don't have any electrical charge so we
call them neutral. The amount of charge in an object can be measured using a unit
called coulombs which is abbreviated with a capital letter C. One coulomb is equivalent
to a certain number of positively charged protons and negative one coulomb is equal to
the same number of negatively charged electrons. The proton and neutron particles are
clumped together at the center of each atom in what's called the nucleus. Now, while
these protons and neutrons are usually stuck together in the nucleus, the electrons
have a lot more freedom to move around and that movement of electrons is what we'll
be focused on throughout this course. The electrons float around the nucleus of the
atom and they can even leave the atom completely and travel to other nearby
atoms. When two similarly charged particles get close to each other, so either two
protons or two electrons, they repel each other and are forced to part. However, when
two oppositely charged particles come together, a positively charged proton and a
negatively charged electron, they're attracted to each other. When an object has an
equal amount of positive and negatively charged particles, we say that it is neutrally
charged because all of those charges balance out. Before I rub the rubber balloon on
the wool scarf, both of them are neutrally charged but when I rub the balloon on the
scarf, the friction causes of bunch of electrons from the atoms in the scarf to jump over
to the atoms on the balloon. This happens because the rubber material has a stronger
desire for electrons than wool so the balloon steals some of those electrons from the
scarf. Now, there are more electrons than usual on this balloon so overall, it's negatively
charged and since the scarf has just lost a bunch of negatively charged electrons when
they jumped over onto the balloon, the scarf now has an overall positive
charge compared to the balloon. Since the balloon and scarf now have opposite overall
charges, they're attracted to each other. Though if I leave them together long
enough, eventually, enough of those extra electrons on the balloon will find their way
back to the scarf so that both objects are neutrally charged again and no longer
attracted to each other. When those little electrons build up and move around in one
place or move from one place to another, we call that electricity and you're watching this
video right now thanks to electricity because computers and the internet rely on the
movement of those tiny little electrons to function. As an electrical engineer, I'll think of
myself like a plumber but rather than using pipes and valves to direct the flow of water, I
design electronic circuits to control the movement of electrons to put them in the right
place at the right time to do something useful.
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Conductors and insulators

- Electricity occurs when electrons accumulate in or flow through the atoms that make
up an object. And different types of materials, which are composed of different
combinations of atoms, may allow those little electrons to move about more or less
freely from atom to atom. The term conductivity describes how easily electrons are able
to move around within certain materials, and it's determined by the structure of atoms in
the material and how they're connected to each other. Materials with a relatively high
conductivity are called conductors. They allow the electrons in them to move about
freely among the atoms. Metals, such as copper and gold, are commonly used as
conductors in electric circuits. Materials that have a relatively low conductivity are called
insulators, and they resist the movement of electrons. In insulated materials, the
electrons are bound more tightly to the atoms, so they have a harder time moving
around. Glass, rubber, and fiber glass are some of the materials that are commonly
used as insulators. Since we can't see electrons moving around, consider this analogy
for conductors and insulators using something we can see, light. This clear glass is
transparent and allows visible light to freely pass through it. This is analogous to an
electrically conductive material, which allows electrons to move through it. This ceramic
mug, on the other hand, is opaque, and prevents light from passing through it. This is
similar to an electrical insulator, which resists the motions of electrons through it. Now,
not all materials are perfectly transparent or opaque, and in the same way, not all
materials are perfect conductors or insulators to electricity. For example, this blue vase
allows most of the light to pass through it, but it's not perfectly transparent. In this
analogy, the clear glass is a better conductor of light than the tinted blue vase. Even
though we tend to categorize materials as either being an electrical conductor or an
insulator, it's important to remember that conductivity of materials exists along a
spectrum. Certain materials make better conductors or insulators than others. Also,
certain properties of a material might be changed by factors, such as
temperature, which can impact the conductivity of that material. When building
electronic circuits, we use combinations of conductive and insulative materials to control
the flow of electrons, and a simple example of that is this piece of wire. The inside of
this wire is made of copper, which is an excellent conductor for electrons to flow
through. The outside of the wire is wrapped in plastic, which acts as an insulator to
protect the copper inside from accidentally touching other conductors, and it keeps the
electrons flowing through the wire. To make an electrical connection between any two
electronic components, like these two pieces of wire, I simply need to touch the
conductive metal parts of the components together, and that will allow the electrons to
move from one wire to the other. Just as a plumber uses pipes to control the flow of
water through a house, we can use wires like these to control the flow of electrons
throughout our circuits.
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Voltage
- When a bunch of electrons congregate in one place, their combined charges build up
to a certain level of electric potential energy in that object. For example, when I rub this
rubber balloon on my wool scarf, it causes a bunch of the electrons from the scarf to
jump over on the balloon. Now the balloon is negatively charged, because it has a
surplus of negatively charged electrons, and the scarf is positively charged, because it
has a shortage of electrons. This imbalance of charge means there's a difference in the
electric potential energy between these two objects. And the difference produces a
force which tries to move the excess electrons from the balloon back towards the
scarf to equalize the charge. We use the term voltage to describe the difference in
electric potential energy between two points. And we'll use that imbalance of energy to
push electrons around when we create electric circuits. Voltage is measured using a
unit called volts to describe how much more, or less, potential energy there is in one
place compared to another. When describing the voltage of something, it's critical to
know what the point of reference is. What are the volts relative to? The point of
reference may not be explicitly defined when working with common voltage sources, but
you're still expected to understand what that voltage means. For example, in a nine volt
battery, that single number, nine volts, means there's a nine volt difference in potential
energy between these two terminals. There's an insulative barrier inside of the
battery that separates the two halves, and the battery works using chemicals inside that
act like a pump, to move electrons from the positive side to the negative side. It moves
just enough electrons to maintain that nine volt difference between the positive and
negative terminals. Looking at another power source, the electrical outlets in North
America operate at 120 volts. That voltage is describing the potential
difference between these two terminals. By convention, the terminal on the left is
called the neutral line, and acts as the point of reference, and the hot terminal on the
right is 120 volts relative to the neutral terminal. In a complex electrical system with lots
of components, different points throughout the system will likely be operating at different
electric potential energy levels. Therefore, to keep track of the voltages at each of these
points throughout a system, it helps to have a single point of reference, the term
Ground, or Common, designates that single reference point which is used to describe
the voltage at other points throughout an electric circuit. The term Ground comes from
the fact that many large electrical systems, like the wiring in your house, are connected
to the earth and literally use the ground as that single point of reference. In practice, the
terms Common and Ground tend to get thrown around and used interchangeably, so it's
important to always understand what the voltages in a circuit are actually reference
to. To illustrate how multiple voltages can be referenced to a single point, I'm going to
use an analogy relating electricity to water. In this analogy, you can think of a
voltage like a difference in pressure. This cooler represents my electric system, and in
it, I have two cans of carbonated soda. I've chosen this can to act as my common point
of reference for this system, so I've labelled it with the symbol for electrical ground. This
other can, labelled A, represents some other point within the system. Right now, both
cans are at the same pressure, which represents their electric potential energy. Since
there's no difference in potential energy between these two cans, can A is at zero
volts relative to the reference can. If I shake up can A, that will increase its internal
pressure, which means can A will have a higher potential energy than the
reference. Now can A represents a point in my system with a positive voltage. These
cans are both in sealed containers, so there's nowhere for the soda inside to go, but if I
was able to connect them together with a straw, soda would flow from the high pressure
in can A, towards the lower pressure in the reference can. Ah, and there's another can
of soda in my cooler, and it's conveniently labelled B. Can B was opened a while
ago, so the carbonation in it has escaped and it's gone flat. Since the pressure in can B
is lower than the reference can, can B represents a negative voltage in the system. For
this analogy, I shook and opened soda cans to change their potential energy, but in an
electrical circuit, we use components called voltage sources, like batteries and power
supplies, which maintain a constant potential difference between two points. I can
compare the voltage between these two battery terminals in the same way I compare
the pressure difference between soda cans. I've connected the negative terminal of the
nine volt battery on the right, to the positive terminal of the battery on the left. And I'm
using that point as the ground reference for the system. Traditionally, black colored
wires are used to connect the negative output of a power source, and red wires are
used to connect the positive output. Point A is represented by the positive terminal of
the right battery, so it's at positive nine volts relative to the ground. Point B is
represented by the negative terminal of the left battery, so the voltage there is negative
nine volts relative to the ground. The fact that point A represents positive voltage and
point B represents negative voltage is dependent on the can I chose to serve as my
reference for ground. If I had selected the open can to be my point of reference, which
has the lowest potential energy of the three cans, then both of the other cans would
have a positive voltage relative to it. This is that same circuit diagram as before, except
I've changed which point I've decided to call the ground reference to be the negative
terminal of the left battery instead of the point in the middle. Now the point in the middle
is at positive nine volts, and point A on the far right is even higher at positive 18 volts,
relative to ground. We encounter a wide range of voltages in day to day life, ranging
from the relatively small signals that come from an audio jack of an MP3 player, which
are usually less than 1 volt, all the way up to the high voltage transmission lines that
carry power over long distance which operate at over 115 thousand volts.
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Current
- When a voltage exists between two points, like the terminals of this nine volt battery, it
generates a force that tries to move the surplus of electrons from the negatively charged
terminal towards the positive one. Right now these two terminals are insulated from
each other, so those electrons don't have a way to get from one terminal to the
other. The air between the two battery terminals is acting as an insulator to prevent
those electrons from making the jump over. But, if I create a conductive path
between them, by connecting them with a copper wire and a light bulb, it allows the
electrons to flow from the negative terminal to the positive one. And we see that
because the light bulb turns on. This flow of electric charge through the wire is
called current, and it's measured in units of amperes, which is usually just shortened to
amps. Amps are used to express the flow rate of electric charge, with one amp being
equivalent to the flow rate of one coulomb worth of charge per second. To give you a
frame of reference for how much current an amp represents, here are a few examples
of current you may encounter in your day to day life, ranging from a small fraction of an
amp that drives headphones attached to an MP3 player, household appliances that use
a few amps to operate, all the way up to over 10,000 amps that flow through a lightning
bolt. I like to think of electrical current flowing through a copper wire like the water
flowing through this hose. Right now, this faucet is acting as a constant source of
pressure, and the pressure is higher at this end of this hose than the end of the hose in
my hand. And this difference in pressure between the two ends is like a voltage. And it
causes the water to flow from the end with the higher potential energy towards the end
with the lower potential energy. Now, unlike voltage, which is a difference in potential
energy between two points, when I'm talking about current I'm only concerned with
what's happening at a single point along this wire. Current is simply a measure of how
much charge is flowing past this point in a single second. There is one tricky aspect to
describing electric current, and that is, which way do we say the current is
flowing? Unfortunately, the answer to that is a bit more confusing than water in a
hose. This diagram shows the circuit I created earlier using a nine volt battery, a light
bulb, and some copper wire. On the battery the negatively charged terminal contains a
surplus of negatively charged electrons. So, when I connect the two terminals with a
conductive path those extra electrons will flow from the negative terminal towards the
positive terminal. It would seem like this would be the direction of current, but when
scientists were first learning about electricity, there was uncertainty about which
particles were actually moving and in what direction. They initially thought that positively
charged particles were flowing in the other direction. Unfortunately, by the time they
figured out what was really going on, the terms positive and negative had already been
established, as well as the convention that current flows from positive to negative
sides. All of the formulas had been written this way, and the scientists had published
lots of books and told all their scientist buddies about it, so it was too late to change
things. And because of that mistake, to this day, we use what's called Conventional
Current Notation, which says that electric current flows from positive to negative. In
actuality, the thing we call current is the movement of spaces where there are not
electrons, which you may hear referred to as holes. The good news is that since all the
formulas were written this way, it keeps the math consistent.
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Circuit basics
- [Instructor] When working with electricity we create circuits, which are looped
pathways for electrons to travel around. In the case of this circuit, connecting a battery
and a light bulb, the wires create a loop that allows an electron to travel from the
negative terminal through the light bulb and down to the positive terminal. Then the
battery uses some of its stored energy to move that electron back over to the negative
side so it can make another trip around the circuit. And this process will continue over
and over for all of the electrons in the circuit. You can relate this process to the way
water cycles through a fountain. The fountain has a pump which takes water from the
base of the fountain and uses energy to increase its pressure. The high pressure then
shoots up into the air, falls back down, and gets collected in the base to be cycled
again. In the case of my simple circuit the battery is acting like the pump. It uses stored
energy to pump electrons from one side of the battery to the other to maintain a specific
voltage between the terminals which keeps the current flowing. There are three basic
elements that make up a circuit. First you need a voltage or current source to move the
electrons around the circuit. In my circuit the battery is serving as the voltage
source. Next you have an electric load, which is a very broad term to describe any
circuit component that consumes electric power. The light bulb is acting as a load in my
example circuit. And finally the circuit needs a conductive pathway that allows the
current to flow in a loop. I used pieces of wire to create that in my circuit. As long as
those three elements are in place and the wire is connected to create a loop the current
will continue to flow. This closed loop is referred to as a closed circuit. But if a circuit
path is broken, that current will stop. This break in the loop is called an open circuit, and
we often use open circuits to intentionally stop the flow of current. For example, a switch
like the one on a flashlight mechanically opens or closes a circuit to turn the flashlight
off or on. When a circuit is open it's important to realize that there's still a voltage
between the two sides of the break. Components attached to the positive and negative
terminals have the same potential energy as those terminals. Since an open circuit
completely blocks the flow of current its opposite is a circuit that allows current to flow
freely and unrestricted, which is called a short circuit. While the term short circuit simply
means a direct electrical connection between two points, it's often used when referring
to an abnormal or unintended connection that enables current to travel the wrong path
through a circuit. They usually occur when two conductive components, like copper
wires, accidentally come in contact with each other. For example, if I accidentally
connected a wire between the two terminals of my battery the electrons will travel along
that shortcut instead of going through the light bulb, because the wire is a better
conductor than the light bulb. Electrons prefer to take the easier, more conductive
route. Short circuits can be dangerous because they allow excessive amounts of
current to flow through parts of a circuit where it's not intended to go, which can cause
the circuit to overheat, and potentially catch fire. Be careful when you're wiring up
circuits to avoid creating a direct connection between the terminals of your power
source.
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Resistance and Ohm's Law

- [Narrator] As electric current passes through a conductive material, like a copper
wire, that wire actually pushes back against the flowing electrons to oppose their
movement. Like how the force of friction opposes the movement of physical
objects. That opposition to electric current is called resistance. Using the analogy to
relate electricity to the water flowing through this hose, you can think of this faucet as a
constant source of pressure, which creates a voltage on the hose and causes water to
flow through it, representing current. The diameter of the hose is directly related to its
resistance. When I hold the hose straight and open like this, the current flows through
more or less freely. But if I put a bend in the hose, that increases its resistance and
restricts the flow of current. In electrical systems, resistance describes how much
an object resists the flow of an electric current. And we measure resistance using units
called ohms, which are represented using the omega symbol. There is a fundamental
relationship between resistance, voltage, and current, called Ohm's Law. According to
Ohm's Law, the voltage across an object is equal to the current through that object
times its resistance. You'll typically see Ohm's Law written as V equals IR. Where V
represents voltage, I represents current, and R represents resistance. Now it may seem
strange to use the letter I to represent current instead of the letter C, but it originates
from a French phrase that was used to describe the intensity of current. I'll be using
these letters to represent voltage, current, and resistance throughout this course. If I
know any two of those three quantities in a circuit, then I can easily use Ohm's Law to
solve for the third. In this simple circuit, the battery is providing the voltage of nine
volts across the light bulb. And the light bulb has some amount of internal resistance, for
this example I'll say it's 20 ohms. When current flows through the light bulb, the light
bulb resists the current and produces heat as a side effect, which is what makes the
light bulb glow. Since I know the resistance of the light bulb, and the voltage across it, to
determine the current through it, I just need to rearrange Ohm's Law. Current is equal to
the voltage, divided by resistance. Dividing nine volts by 20 ohms shows that the light
bulb will have 0.45 amps flowing through it. It's fortunate that the relationship for Ohm's
Law is so simple, because I frequently use it when designing circuits, to determine the
effect that changing one of these quantities, like voltage or resistance, will have on the
other two. It's easy to relate Ohm's Law to the water flowing through a hose. Right now
I'm holding the hose steady so its resistance is remaining constant. If I increase the
pressure on the hose, or increase the voltage, that causes the current through the hose
to also increase. And if I decrease the voltage on the hose, that causes the current to
decrease along with it. Now, if I keep that voltage or pressure on the hose the same, but
I bend the hose to increase its resistance, that increase in resistance causes the current
through the hose to decrease. And if I straighten the hose back out to decrease its
resistance, that causes the current through the hose to increase back up. Now, consider
the final scenario, what if my hose gets a clog in it? That's an increase in
resistance that's outside of my control. And that increase in resistance has caused the
current to drop off, but what if I want to have that same amount of current that I had
before? To accomplish that, I would need to increase the voltage, by a proportional
amount to offset that increase in resistance.
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SI prefixes
- [Narrator] When working with electronics, it's common to encounter really large
values, like 10 million Ohms, and really small values like 0.003 amps, and it can be
cumbersome to write out those numbers. All of those zeroes take up a lot of space and
it's easy to miscount them at a glance. So to make large and small numbers easier to
work with, we use a common set of prefixes to describe quantities based on powers of
10. These Metric Prefixes are attached to the front of the base unit like volts, amps, or
Ohms, to indicate a multiple or fraction of that unit. This table contains the most
common prefixes you'll encounter when working with electronics. And I've included a
copy of it in the exercise files for this video that you can use as reference. The prefixes
on the top half of the chart, kilo, mega, and giga, represent multiples of a base unit that
are greater than one. And the prefixes on the bottom half of the chart, milli, micro, nano,
and pico represent fractions of a base unit that are smaller than one. Each prefix has a
name which is attached to the base unit when it's spoken or written out in full. And
there's a symbol version for each prefix to use with the symbol representation of the
units. Decoding prefixes is as simple as multiplying the factors or powers of 10, shown
in the right two columns. For example, 42 mega-Ohms, which uses a capital M as the
prefix symbol, is 42 times 10 to the sixth power, which is 42 million Ohms. As another
example, 42 milliamps, which uses a lower-case m as the prefix symbol, that's equal to
42 times 10 to the power of minus three, or zero point zero four two amps. Going the
other way, if I want to figure out the Metric Prefix to use for a value, like 150,000 volts, I
would look for the prefix that most closely matches it. In this case, my value is a multiple
of a thousand, which is 10 to the third power, so I'll use units of kilovolts to describe it. It
would also be possible to describe that unit in values of megavolts, because 150 times
10 to the third volts is the same as point one five times ten to the sixth volts. In fact, I
could technically write out that value using any one of those possible prefixes, but I'll
choose the prefix that makes it easiest to read, because that's the point of using them.
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