Chapter Four

Anatomy of a Flashlight

Flashlights are useful for numerous tasks, of which reading under the
covers and sending coded messages are only the two most obvious. The
common household flashlight can also take center stage in an educational
show-and-tell of the ubiquitous stuff known as electricity.
Electricity is an amazing phenomenon, managing to be pervasively
useful while remaining largely mysterious, even to people who pretend to
know how it works. Fortunately, we need to understand only a few basic
concepts to comprehend how electricity is used inside computers.
The flashlight is certainly one of the simpler electrical appliances found
in most homes. Disassemble a typical flashlight and you’ll find that it
consists of one or more batteries, a lightbulb, a switch, some metal pieces,
and a case to hold everything together.
These days, most flashlights use light-emitting diodes (LEDs), but one
advantage of more retro lightbulbs is that you can see inside the glass bulb:
 This is known as an incandescent lightbulb. Most Americans believe
that the incandescent lightbulb was invented by Thomas Edison, while the
British are quite certain that Joseph Swan was responsible. In truth, many
other scientists and inventors made crucial strides before either Edison or
Swan got involved.
Inside the bulb is a filament made of tungsten, which glows when
electricity is applied. The bulb is filled with an inert gas to prevent the
tungsten from burning up when it gets hot. The two ends of that filament
are connected to thin wires that are attached to the tubular base of the
lightbulb and to the tip at the bottom.
You can make your own no-frills flashlight by disposing of everything
except the batteries and the lightbulb. You’ll also need some short pieces of
insulated wire (with the insulation stripped from the ends) and enough
hands to hold everything together:

Notice the two loose ends of the wires at the right of the diagram. That’s
our switch. Assuming that the batteries are good and the bulb isn’t burned
out, touching these loose ends together will turn on the light:
 This book uses the color red to indicate that electricity is flowing
through the wires and lighting up the lightbulb.
What we’ve constructed here is a simple electrical circuit, and the first
thing to notice is that a circuit is a circle. The lightbulb will light up only if
the path from the batteries to the wire to the bulb to the switch and back to
the batteries is continuous. Any break in this circuit will cause the bulb to
go out. The purpose of the switch is to control this process.
The circular nature of the electrical circuit suggests that something is
moving around the circuit, perhaps like water flowing through pipes. The
“water and pipes” analogy is quite common in explanations of how
electricity works, but eventually it breaks down, as all analogies must.
Electricity is like nothing else in this universe, and we must confront it on
its own terms.
One approach to understanding the workings of electricity is called the
electron theory, which explains electricity as the movement of electrons.
As we know, all matter—the stuff that we can see and feel (usually)—is
made up of extremely small things called atoms. Every atom is composed
of three types of particles; these are called neutrons, protons, and electrons.
Sometimes an atom is depicted as a little solar system, with the neutrons
and protons bound into a nucleus and the electrons spinning around the
nucleus like planets around a sun, but that’s an obsolete model.
The number of electrons in an atom is usually the same as the number of
protons. But in certain circumstances, electrons can be dislodged from
atoms. That’s how electricity happens.
The words electron and electricity both derive from the ancient Greek
word ηλεκτρον (elektron), which oddly is the Greek word for “amber,” the
glasslike hardened sap of trees. The reason for this unlikely derivation is
that the ancient Greeks experimented with rubbing amber with wool, which
produces something we now call static electricity. Rubbing wool on amber
causes the wool to pick up electrons from the amber. The wool winds up
with more electrons than protons, and the amber ends up with fewer
electrons than protons. In more modern experiments, carpeting picks up
electrons from the soles of our shoes.
Protons and electrons have a characteristic called charge. Protons are
said to have a positive (+) charge and electrons are said to have a negative
(−) charge, but the symbols don’t mean plus and minus in the arithmetical
sense, or that protons have something that electrons don’t. The + and −
symbols indicate simply that protons and electrons are opposite in some
way. This opposite characteristic manifests itself in how protons and
electrons relate to each other.
Protons and electrons are happiest and most stable when they exist
together in equal numbers. An imbalance of protons and electrons will
attempt to correct itself. When the carpet picks up electrons from your
shoes, eventually everything gets evened out when you touch something
and feel a spark. That spark of static electricity is the movement of
electrons by a rather circuitous route from the carpet through your body and
back to your shoes.
Static electricity isn’t limited to the little sparks produced by fingers
touching doorknobs. During storms, the bottoms of clouds accumulate
electrons while the tops of clouds lose electrons; eventually, the imbalance
is evened out with a bolt of lightning. Lightning is a lot of electrons moving
very quickly from one spot to another.
The electricity in the flashlight circuit is obviously much better
mannered than a spark or a lightning bolt. The light burns steadily and
continuously because the electrons aren’t just jumping from one place to
another. As one atom in the circuit loses an electron to another atom nearby,
it grabs another electron from an adjacent atom, which grabs an electron
from another adjacent atom, and so on. The electricity in the circuit is the
passage of electrons from atom to atom.
This doesn’t happen all by itself. We can’t just wire up any old bunch of
stuff and expect some electricity to happen. We need something to
precipitate the movement of electrons around the circuit. Looking back at
our diagram of the no-frills flashlight, we can safely assume that the thing
that begins the movement of electricity is not the wires and not the
lightbulb, so it’s probably the batteries.
The batteries used in flashlights are usually cylindrical and labeled D, C,
A, AA, or AAA depending on the size. The flat end of the battery is labeled
with a minus sign (−); the other end has a little protrusion labeled with a
plus sign (+).
Batteries generate electricity through a chemical reaction. The chemicals
in batteries are chosen so that the reactions between them generate spare
electrons on the side of the battery marked with a minus sign (called the
negative terminal, or anode) and demand extra electrons on the other side of
the battery (the positive terminal, or cathode). In this way, chemical energy
is converted to electrical energy.
The batteries used in flashlights generate about 1.5 volts of electricity.
I’ll discuss what this means shortly.
The chemical reaction can’t proceed unless there’s some way that the
extra electrons can be taken away from the negative terminal of the battery
and delivered back to the positive terminal. This occurs with an electrical
circuit that connects the two terminals. The electrons travel around this
circuit in a counterclockwise direction:
 Electrons from the chemicals in the batteries might not so freely mingle
with the electrons in the copper wires if not for a simple fact: All electrons,
wherever they’re found, are identical. There’s nothing that distinguishes a
copper electron from any other electron.
Notice that both batteries are facing the same direction. The positive end
of the bottom battery takes electrons from the negative end of the top
battery. It’s as if the two batteries have been combined into one larger
battery with a positive terminal at one end and a negative terminal at the
other end. The combined battery is 3 volts rather than 1.5 volts.
If we turn one of the batteries upside down, the circuit won’t work:
 The two positive ends of the battery need electrons for the chemical
reactions, but there’s no way electrons can get to them because they’re
attached to each other. If the two positive ends of the battery are connected,
the two negative ends should be also:

This works. The batteries are said to be connected in parallel rather than
in series as shown earlier. The combined voltage is 1.5 volts, which is the
same as the voltage of each of the batteries. The light will probably still
glow, but not as brightly as with two batteries in series. But the batteries
will last twice as long.
 We normally like to think of a battery as providing electricity to a
circuit. But we’ve seen that we can also think of a circuit as providing a
way for a battery’s chemical reactions to take place. The circuit takes
electrons away from the negative end of the battery and delivers them to the
positive end of the battery. The reactions in the battery proceed until all the
chemicals are exhausted, at which time you properly dispose of the battery
or recharge it.
From the negative end of the battery to the positive end of the battery,
the electrons flow through the wires and the lightbulb. But why do we need
the wires? Can’t the electricity just flow through the air? Well, yes and no.
Yes, electricity can flow through air (particularly wet air), or else we
wouldn’t see lightning. But electricity doesn’t flow through air very readily.
Some substances are significantly better than others for carrying
electricity. The ability of an element to carry electricity is related to its
subatomic structure. Electrons surround the nucleus in various levels, called
shells. An atom that has just one electron in its outer shell can readily give
up that electron, which is what’s necessary to carry electricity. These
substances are conducive to carrying electricity and thus are said to be
conductors. The best conductors are copper, silver, and gold. It’s no
coincidence that these three elements are found in the same column of the
periodic table. Copper is the most common substance for making wires.
The opposite of conductance is resistance. Some substances are more
resistant to the passage of electricity than others, and these are known as
resistors. If a substance has a very high resistance—meaning that it doesn’t
conduct electricity much at all—it’s known as an insulator. Rubber and
plastic are good insulators, which is why these substances are often used to
coat wires. Cloth and wood are also good insulators, as is dry air. Just about
anything will conduct electricity, however, if the voltage is high enough.
Copper has a very low resistance, but it still has some resistance. The
longer a wire, the higher its resistance. If you tried wiring a flashlight with
wires that were miles long, the resistance in the wires would be so high that
the flashlight wouldn’t work.
The thicker a wire, the lower its resistance. This may be somewhat
counterintuitive. You might imagine that a thick wire requires much more
electricity to “fill it up.” But actually the thickness of the wire makes
available many more electrons to move through the wire.
 I’ve mentioned voltage but haven’t defined it. What does it mean when a
battery has 1.5 volts? Actually, voltage—named after Count Alessandro
Volta (1745–1827), who invented the first battery in 1800—is one of the
more difficult concepts of elementary electricity. Voltage refers to a
potential for doing work. Voltage exists whether or not something is hooked
up to a battery.
Consider a brick. Sitting on the floor, the brick has very little potential.
Held in your hand four feet above the floor, the brick has more potential.
All you need do to realize this potential is drop the brick. Held in your hand
at the top of a tall building, the brick has much more potential. In all three
cases, you’re holding the brick and it’s not doing anything, but the potential
is different.
A much easier concept in electricity is the notion of current. Current is
related to the number of electrons actually zipping around the circuit.
Current is measured in amperes, named after André-Marie Ampère (1775–
1836), but often called just amps, as in “a 10-amp fuse.” To get one amp of
current, you need over 6 quintillion electrons flowing past a particular point
per second. That’s 6 followed by 18 zeros, or 6 billion billions.
The water-and-pipes analogy helps out here: Current is similar to the
amount of water flowing through a pipe. Voltage is similar to the water
pressure. Resistance is similar to the width of a pipe—the smaller the pipe,
the greater the resistance. So the more water pressure you have, the more
water that flows through the pipe. The smaller the pipe, the less water that
flows through it. The amount of water flowing through a pipe (the current)
is directly proportional to the water pressure (the voltage) and inversely
proportional to the skinniness of the pipe (the resistance).
In electricity, you can calculate how much current is flowing through a
circuit if you know the voltage and the resistance. Resistance—the tendency
of a substance to impede the flow of electrons—is measured in ohms,
named after Georg Simon Ohm (1789–1854), who also proposed the
famous Ohm’s law. The law states

I = E/R

where I is traditionally used to represent current in amperes, E is used to

The voltage, E, is 1.5. That’s a potential for doing work. But because the
positive and negative terminals are connected solely by air, the resistance
(the symbol R) is very, very, very high, which means the current (I) equals
1.5 volts divided by a large number. This means that the current is just
about zero.
Now let’s connect the positive and negative terminals with a short piece
of copper wire (and from here on, the insulation on the wires won’t be
shown):

This is known as a short circuit. The voltage is still 1.5, but the
resistance is now very, very low. The current is 1.5 volts divided by a very
small number. This means that the current will be very, very high. Lots and
lots of electrons will be flowing through the wire. In reality, the actual
current will be limited by the physical size of the battery. The battery will
probably not be able to deliver such a high current, and the voltage will
drop below 1.5 volts. If the battery is big enough, the wire will get hot
because the electrical energy is being converted to heat. If the wire gets
very hot, it will actually glow and might even melt.
Most circuits are somewhere between these two extremes. We can
symbolize them like so:
 The squiggly line is recognizable to electrical engineers as the symbol
for a resistor. Here it means that the circuit has a resistance that is neither
very low nor very high.
If a wire has a low resistance, it can get hot and start to glow. This is
how an incandescent lightbulb works.
The filament commonly found in the incandescent bulbs in flashlights
has a resistance of about 4 ohms. If the flashlight requires two batteries
connected end to end, the current is 3 volts divided by 4 ohms, or 0.75
ampere, which can also be expressed as 750 milliamperes. This means that
over 4.5 quintillion electrons are flowing through the lightbulb every
second. The resistance of the filament causes the electrical energy to be
converted into light and heat.
Another common measurement of electricity is the watt, named after
James Watt (1736–1819), who is best known for his work on the steam
engine. The watt is a measurement of power (P) and can be calculated as

P = E × I

The 3 volts and 0.75 amp of our flashlight indicate that we’re dealing
with a 2.25-watt lightbulb. LEDs are generally replacing incandescent bulbs
because they can deliver the same quantity of light with less heat and lower
wattage. Electricity bills are based on watts, so lowering the wattage of
lightbulbs saves both money and the environment.
We have now seemingly analyzed everything about the flashlight—the
batteries, the wires, and the lightbulb. But we’ve forgotten the most
important part!
Yes, the switch. The switch controls whether electricity is flowing in the
circuit or not. When a switch allows electricity to flow, it is said to be on, or
closed. An off, or open, switch doesn’t allow electricity to flow. (The way
we use the words closed and open for switches is opposite to the way we
use them for a door. A closed door prevents anything from passing through
it; a closed switch allows electricity to flow.)
Either the switch is closed or it’s open. Either current flows or it doesn’t.
Either the lightbulb lights up or it doesn’t.
Like the binary codes invented by Morse and Braille, this simple
flashlight is either on or off. There’s no in-between. This similarity between
binary codes and simple electrical circuits is going to prove very useful in
the chapters ahead.