I think I have a basic idea of what electricity can do, but what is it? Is there a better answer than “energy” , or other generic term?
Websters: a fundamental entity of nature consisting of negative and positive kinds, observable in the attractions and repulsions of bodies electrified by friction and in natural phenomena (as lightning or the aurora borealis), and usually utilized in the form of electric currents
Thanks Sailor, but I just don’t see why a definition can contain off-shoots of the root:
Do you see what I’m saying? I think this definition is good if you know what electricty already sorta is, but couldn’t this be the same definition for YING and YANG? or “THE FORCE”? I like the part about positive and negative, but what the heck is that too when you come to think about it? Maybe I am just nuts today!
Electrons. You know, those little subatomic particles that orbit (sort of) the nuclei of atoms.
Magick!
It’s the flow of current, i.e the movement of charge, static electricity is just charge.
Yeah, it is sorta like Magick.
It’s all FM.
Hmm, I’ll take a stab.
It’s an electromagnetic wave guided by a conductor such as copper wire.
An electromagnetic wave is a situation where a moving electric field creates a moving magnetic field and vice versa.
[old EE joke]
Electricity is smoke. Once you let all of the smoke out of circuits they never work any more.
[/old EE joke]
The original question is wrong. It assumes that a single thing called “electricity” exists. If you assume such a thing, you’re sunk right at the start.
Here’s a much better question:
"How do we define the word ‘electricity?’ "
It turns out that the word has several conflicting meanings: “electricity” is the quantity of electric charge, as in electrons are particles of electricity… but the word is also defined as the flow rate of the charge, as in “quantity of current electricity” or “amperes of electricity.” Stupid, eh? How can the flowing of the stuff be ‘electricity’, if the stuff that flows is ALSO the ‘electricity?’ But I’m not done. The word is also defined as the quantity of electromagnetic energy, as in “electric companies sell electricity.” And it’s also defined as the flow rate of energy, as in “watts of electricity.” And to top it off, “electricity” is defined as NOT a substance or energy, but as a class of phenomena similar to “weather” or “geology.”
One simple solution to all of this is to decide that “electricity” is useless as a meaningful term. Then ask simple questions like “what is charge”, or “what does voltage measure?” or “what do electric companies send out?”
http://amasci.com/miscon/whatis.html
Also see:
Come on, what is electricity, REALLY?
http://www.amasci.com/elect/elefaq1.html#ae
Electricity governs the behavior of charges. Charge is a property with two possible values, positive and negative. Electricity, loosely defined, is the spontaneous force (i.e. it happens by itself all the time) that causes opposite charges to attract each other and negative charges to repel each other, the strength of attraction/repulsion in direct proportion to the strength of the charges, and inverse square proportion to their distance from each other. I think that’s about as basic as you can get.
Sorry I can’t get any more fundamental than that, but sometimes in physics there’s only so low you can go. On the first day of my mathematical physics course this semester, our professor told us, “A tensor is anything that transforms like a tensor.” So going below “there’s two kinds of this thing called charge, positive and negative, and electricity is what they do to each other” is pretty much impossible.
As soon as I saw this thread title, I was going to post this link, provided by none other than the SDMB’s own bbeaty. His electricity articles are excellent.
(And now on preview, I see that our own bbeaty has already replied himself to the OP. )
Nicola Tesla was one of the outstanding pioneers in the field of electrical technology. He perfected the electric motor and designed the world’s first AC electric power plant, at Niagra Falls. He invented remote control, and was the outstanding pioneer in the field of robotics, developing a remote-controlled boat in the late 19th Century. In 1943, after both men had died, The U. S. Supreme Court ruled that it was he, and not Marconi, who was the true inventor of radio.
Looking back on his career as an inventor and researcher, Tesla said there was one question he would still like answered: just what is electricity really?
It is a flow of electrons. And what, exactly, are electrons, and how is it that they can flow, and why is it that when they flow they produce the effects they do?
Early in the 20th Century an outstanding physicist named Neil Bohrs said that electrons are like hard little balls that are infinitely elastic. It was he that developed the familiar model of the atom as a cluster of balls with other balls–the electrons–orbiting around it. Importantly, he said that this was only a model of what an atom seemed to be like, and how (given the limited knowledge of the time) it seemed to behave.
Given the far more advanced knowledge of our time, physicists (unlike me), understand the limitations of this model. Which only means that today scientists and engineers ask: so, just what is electricity, really?
Umm… electricity is the FORCE? (i.e., quantity of electricity is measured in Newtons?) Or electricity is the FLOW of electrons? (i.e. quantity of electricity is measured in amperes?)
But if you look at the CRC handbook, under the definitions of physics terms, you’ll find “quantity of electricity” defined as Coulombs (as quantity of charge, not as a force.) In scientific terms, each electron carries a small quantity of “electricity” or electric charge. (The phrase “charge of electricity” is centuries old in physical science.)
But this is totally contradicted by the everyday use of the word, where “electricity” is a quantity of electromagnetic energy and is measured in watthours, joules, etc.
And then you’ll find people who insist that “electricity” is something abstract, something like physics or geology. You can’t have a shovel full of geology, or a bucket of weather. Neither can you have the utility companies selling quantities of “electricity.”
Because of these crazy contradictory uses of the word “electricity” it is clear that there’s no such thing as “electricity.” The word itself is corrupted. Yes, electric charge still exists (the coulombs). So does electromagnetic energy (the KWH.) And all sorts of electrical phenomena exist. But asking “what is electricity” is like asking those seven blind men “what is an elephant?” You’ll end up with seven firm and confident answers, all of which contradict each other. Note that just this problem is happening in this thread: firm, confident answers that don’t make sense when all taken together. Look for the contradictions.