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Electricity is all around us: cars, telephones, computers, lights -- the modern world runs entirely on electrons. But what are electrons? How do they behave? How do we control them? This book will show you how to build a battery, detect static electricity and construct a basic current meter, all using common items from your kitchen. Along the way you'll learn about the meaning of "voltage" and "current", what makes an LED work and the difference between AC and DC. The last chapter uses transistors -- the basic building blocks of every computer -- for lots of interesting experiments. With plenty of colorful illustrations, historical stories and an easy, accessible style, "A Kitchen Course in Electricity and Magnetism" will be a great start for budding and amateur scientists who want to learn more about how the world works.
List of contents
Part 1 HOME ELECTROSTATICS.- Background.- Kitchen experiments with static electricity.- Atoms.- Experiment: bending water.- Dipoles.- Experiment comb & paper.- Kitchen electroscope.- Experiments with the electroscope.- Storing charge.- Charging by inducing charges.- Conductors and insulators.- Lightning; Franklin s bells.- Airplane as a Faraday Cage.- Part 2 CURRENT & VOLTAGE.- Water analogy.- Galvani s frogs legs.- Amps, volts, energy, power.- Another way to get a voltage Seebeck Effect.- LEDs vs bulbs.- Making a simple current meter.- Ohm's law.- Experiment resistance of a household bulb.- Definition of power.- Lighting the LED.- Solar cells.- A charging circuit plain diode.- Brief history of electrical diodes.- Series and parallel, water analogy.- Automobile lighting.- AC & DC.- An AC experiment with LEDs.- Part 3 MAGNETISM.- Lodestones.- Further view of magnetism.- A kitchen compass .- Diamagnetism.- Oersted s experiment.- A coil.- Inductance.- A house alarm.- Force on a current (Lorentz force).- Adjacent currents.- Lorentz force with old TVs.- Hall effect.- Note on microwave ovens.- Relative motion of a magnet and a wire; Faraday s law.- A kitchen radio.- Experiment: falling magnet.- A household use of a moving magnet.- Part 4 TRANSISTORS.- Re-visit the diode.- The pn junction.- Experiment diode graph.- Note on flat screen TVs that display with diodes.- Comment on LCDs.- The transistor.- Experiment transistor as switch.- Resistor color code.- Experiment transistor as amplifier.
About the author
J. David Nightingale has taught physics for over 30 years at SUNY New Paltz. More recently he has been a regular essayist for Northeast Public Radio, authoring many essays on famous scientists from history. Prof. Nightingale has previously co-authored the Springer book "A Short Course in General Relativity", now in its third edition.
Summary
Electricity is all around us: cars, telephones, computers, lights -- the modern world runs entirely on electrons. But what are electrons? How do they behave? How do we control them? This book will show you how to build a battery, detect static electricity and construct a basic current meter, all using common items from your kitchen. Along the way you'll learn about the meaning of "voltage" and "current", what makes an LED work and the difference between AC and DC. The last chapter uses transistors -- the basic building blocks of every computer -- for lots of interesting experiments. With plenty of colorful illustrations, historical stories and an easy, accessible style, "A Kitchen Course in Electricity and Magnetism" will be a great start for budding and amateur scientists who want to learn more about how the world works.
