MAKALAH BAHASA INGGRIS
Electricity
Disusun Oleh :
TEKNIK ELEKTRO
Mhd. Barri Siregar (130402021)
Zulhafni Adha (130402025)
Henry Priady Pasaribu (140402008)
Adrianus N I Purba (140402010)
Nurhalimah Batubara (140402012)
Radinal Muchtar Rangkuti (140402014)
Raih Chrissanto Gunawan (140402016)
FAKULTAS TEKNIK
UNIVERSITAS SUMATERA UTARA
2017
ELECTRICITY
1. What is Electricity
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence
and flow of electric charge. Electricity gives a wide variety of well-known effects,
such as lightning, static electricity, electromagnetic induction and electrical
current. In addition, electricity permits the creation and reception of
electromagnetic radiation such as radio waves.
Electrical phenomena have been studied since antiquity, though progress in
theoretical understanding remained slow until the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. Even then, practical applications for electricity were few, and it would
not be until the late nineteenth century that engineers were able to put it to
industrial and residential use. The rapid expansion in electrical technology at this
time transformed industry and society. Electricity's extraordinary versatility means
it can be put to an almost limitless set of applications which include transport,
heating, lighting, communications, and computation.
2. History of electricity
Long before any knowledge of electricity existed people were aware of
shocks from electric fish. Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BC referred to
these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", and described them as the "protectors"
of all other fish. Electric fish were again reported millennia later by ancient Greek,
Roman and Arabic naturalists and physicians. Several ancient writers, such as
Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, attested to the numbing effect of electric
shocks delivered by catfish and torpedo rays, and knew that such shocks could
travel along conducting objects. Patients suffering from ailments such as gout or
headache were directed to touch electric fish in the hope that the powerful jolt
might cure them. Possibly the earliest and nearest approach to the discovery of the
identity of lightning, and electricity from any other source, is to be attributed to
the Arabs, who before the 15th century had the Arabic word for lightning (raad)
applied to the electric ray.
Ancient cultures around the Mediterranean knew that certain objects, such
as rods of amber, could be rubbed with cat's fur to attract light objects like
feathers. Thales of Miletus made a series of observations on static electricity
around 600 BC, from which he believed that friction rendered amber magnetic, in
contrast to minerals such as magnetite, which needed no rubbing. Thales was
incorrect in believing the attraction was due to a magnetic effect, but later science
would prove a link between magnetism and electricity. According to a
controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating,
based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic
cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature.
Electricity would remain little more than an intellectual curiosity for
millennia until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert made a careful
study of electricity and magnetism, distinguishing the lodestone effect from static
electricity produced by rubbing amber. He coined the New Latin word electricus
("of amber" or "like amber", from , elektron, the Greek word for
"amber") to refer to the property of attracting small objects after being rubbed.
This association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which
made their first appearance in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica
of 1646.
Further work was conducted by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen
Gray and C. F. du Fay. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted
extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June
1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite
string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks
jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed
electrical in nature. He also explained the apparently paradoxical behavior of the
Leyden jar as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge in terms of
electricity consisting of both positive and negative charges.
In 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery of bioelectricity,
demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which nerve cells passed signals
to the muscles. Alessandro Volta's battery, or voltaic pile, of 1800, made from
alternating layers of zinc and copper, provided scientists with a more reliable
source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines previously used. The
recognition of electromagnetism, the unity of electric and magnetic phenomena, is
due to Hans Christian rsted and Andr-Marie Ampre in 1819-1820; Michael
Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821, and Georg Ohm mathematically
analysed the electrical circuit in 1827. Electricity and magnetism (and light) were
definitively linked by James Clerk Maxwell, in particular in his "On Physical
Lines of Force" in 1861 and 1862.
While the early 19th century had seen rapid progress in electrical science,
the late 19th century would see the greatest progress in electrical engineering.
Through such people as Alexander Graham Bell, Ott Blthy, Thomas Edison,
Galileo Ferraris, Oliver Heaviside, nyos Jedlik, Lord Kelvin, Sir Charles
Parsons, Ernst Werner von Siemens, Joseph Swan, Nikola Tesla and George
Westinghouse, electricity turned from a scientific curiosity into an essential tool
for modern life, becoming a driving force of the Second Industrial Revolution.
In 1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered that electrodes illuminated with
ultraviolet light create electric sparks more easily. In 1905 Albert Einstein
published a paper that explained experimental data from the photoelectric effect as
being the result of light energy being carried in discrete quantized packets,
energising electrons. This discovery led to the quantum revolution. Einstein was
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for "his discovery of the law of the photoelectric
effect". The photoelectric effect is also employed in photocells such as can be
found in solar panels and this is frequently used to make electricity commercially.
The first solid-state device was the "cat's whisker" detector, first used in
1930s radio receivers. A whisker-like wire is placed lightly in contact with a solid
crystal (such as a germanium crystal) in order to detect a radio signal by the
contact junction effect. In a solid-state component, the current is confined to solid
elements and compounds engineered specifically to switch and amplify it. Current
flow can be understood in two forms: as negatively charged electrons, and as
positively charged electron deficiencies called holes. These charges and holes are
understood in terms of quantum physics. The building material is most often a
crystalline semiconductor.
The solid-state device came into its own with the invention of the transistor
in 1947. Common solid-state devices include transistors, microprocessor chips,
and RAM. A specialized type of RAM called flash RAM is used in flash drives
and more recently, solid state drives to replace mechanically rotating magnetic
disc hard drives. Solid state devices became prevalent in the 1950s and the 1960s,
during the transition from vacuum tubes to semiconductor diodes, transistors,
integrated circuit (IC) and the light-emitting diode (LED).
3. How Electricity Works
How Electricity Works is a very common question. Electric power is as
common to us as running water in many areas, especially in industrialised
countries. Despite this, there is a great deal of ignorance about this strange force
and how it comes about.
If you can picture an atom as a sphere, imagine how electricity works in the
nucleus in the centre that contains at least one proton and at least one neutron. The
proton is positively charged. In orbit around the nucleus is at least one electron
which is negatively charged. The reason they have these opposite charges takes us
deep into quantum physics. We know that the neutron is made up of quarks and
the electron is an elementary particle (it is not made up of anything and is a
particle in its own right), but the reason why they have opposite charges is a
matter beyond my meagre capabilities and, in any case, this area is at the fringes
of human knowledge.
Atoms may contain several protons and electrons. This variation is what
separates elements from each other and how electricity works. Although described
as sub-atomic particles, electrons have the properties of both particles and waves.
In theory at least they could be both at the same time.
If an atom has no electric charge, i.e. it is neutral, then it contains the same
amount of protons as electrons. In some materials - most metals for example - the
electrons' orbit around the nucleus is quite loose and they can spin away from the
atom. When this happens the atom becomes positively charged because protons
are in the majority within the atom. A free electron can join another atom. When
this occurs then its new host atom becomes negatively charged because the
electrons are in the majority (assuming the atom was neutral in the first place).
When it comes to asking how electricity works, The key thing to remember
here is that opposites attract. The greater the difference between the number of
electrons and protons, the greater the attraction will be. This is called potential
difference. If we therefore can manage to produce a negative charge at one end of
a copper wire and a positive charge at the other end, free electrons would move
towards the positive end. As electrons leave those atoms nearest the positive end,
they leave behind positively charged atoms. Electrons from neighbouring atoms
will be attracted towards these positive atoms thus creating yet more positive
atoms in their wake. This continuing transfer of electrons is called current. The
greater the potential difference, or voltage to use its measuring unit, the greater the
force of the flow of electrons - or current.
Electric power can be supplied as direct current (e.g. from car batteries) or
as alternating current (e.g. household mains).
Often an electrical product requires a different voltage to the one that is
supplied from mains electric power. In these cases, a transformer is required. The
use of transformers is very common along power lines and in electrical devices.
As well as the step-up transformers that increase voltage - transformers can also
reduce voltage. These step-down transformers can be found at utility substations
where the very high voltages required to push electrons through long
transmissions wires are reduced for local consumption.
4. Electric energy
Electrical energy is the energy newly derived from electrical potential
energy. When loosely used to describe energy absorbed or delivered by an
electrical circuit (for example, one provided by an electric power utility)
"electrical energy" talks about energy which has been converted from electrical
potential energy. This energy is supplied by the combination of electric current
and electrical potential that is delivered by the circuit. At the point that this
electrical potential energy has been converted to another type of energy, it ceases
to be electrical potential energy. Thus, all electrical energy is potential energy
before it is delivered to the end-use. Once converted from potential energy,
electrical energy can always be called another type of energy (heat, light, motion,
etc.).
5. Electricity Generated
Electricity generation is the process of generating electric energy from other
forms of energy.
The fundamental principles of electricity generation were discovered during
the 1820s and early 1830s by the British scientist Michael Faraday. His basic
method is still used today: electricity is generated by the movement of a loop of
wire, or disc of copper between the poles of a magnet.
For electric utilities, it is the first step in the delivery of electricity to
consumers. The other processes, electricity transmission, distribution, and
electrical power storage and recovery using pumped-storage methods are normally
carried out by the electric power industry.
Electricity is most often generated at a power station by electromechanical
generators, primarily driven by heat engines fueled by chemical combustion or
nuclear fission but also by other means such as the kinetic energy of flowing
water and wind. There are many other technologies that can be and are used to
generate electricity such as solar photovoltaics and geothermal power.
6. Electricity and the natural world
Physiological effects
A voltage applied to a human body causes an electric current through the
tissues, and although the relationship is non-linear, the greater the voltage, the
greater the current. The threshold for perception varies with the supply frequency
and with the path of the current, but is about 0.1 mA to 1 mA for mains-frequency
electricity, though a current as low as a microamp can be detected as an
electrovibration effect under certain conditions. If the current is sufficiently high,
it will cause muscle contraction, fibrillation of the heart, and tissue burns. The
lack of any visible sign that a conductor is electrified makes electricity a particular
hazard. The pain caused by an electric shock can be intense, leading electricity at
times to be employed as a method of torture. Death caused by an electric shock is
referred to as electrocution. Electrocution is still the means of judicial execution
in some jurisdictions, though its use has become rarer in recent times.
Electrical phenomena in nature
Electricity is not a human invention, and may be observed in several forms
in nature, a prominent manifestation of which is lightning. Many interactions
familiar at the macroscopic level, such as touch, friction or chemical bonding, are
due to interactions between electric fields on the atomic scale. The Earth's
magnetic field is thought to arise from a natural dynamo of circulating currents in
the planet's core. Certain crystals, such as quartz, or even sugar, generate a
potential difference across their faces when subjected to external pressure. This
phenomenon is known as piezoelectricity, from the Greek piezein (),
meaning to press, and was discovered in 1880 by Pierre and Jacques Curie. The
effect is reciprocal, and when a piezoelectric material is subjected to an electric
field, a small change in physical dimensions takes place.
Some organisms, such as sharks, are able to detect and respond to changes
in electric fields, an ability known as electroreception, while others, termed
electrogenic, are able to generate voltages themselves to serve as a predatory or
defensive weapon. The order Gymnotiformes, of which the best known example is
the electric eel, detect or stun their prey via high voltages generated from
modified muscle cells called electrocytes. All animals transmit information along
their cell membranes with voltage pulses called action potentials, whose functions
include communication by the nervous system between neurons and muscles. An
electric shock stimulates this system, and causes muscles to contract. Action
potentials are also responsible for coordinating activities in certain plants.
7. Conclusion
Electricity figures everywhere in our lives. Electricity lights up our homes, cooks
our food, powers our computers, television sets, and other electronic devices.
Electricity from batteries keeps our cars running and makes our flashlights shine
in the dark. But, electricity can also be a danger to humans if used incorrectly. So,
use the electricity wisely.
