Imagine you’re holding each end of a rope that is looped around a pulley. When you pull on the rope with one hand, your other hand goes in the opposite direction and the pulley turns a little bit. You’ve transfered a little bit of work to the pulley, which can be used to do other things. But “you” have only moved a little bit. You pull your stretched hand in, and you other hand goes out and the pulley does a little more work. Now do this movement 60 times a second (50 in some parts of the world), and you’ve just discovered alternating current electricity. You don’t have to move much in order to send energy over long distances, which is one of the advantages of AC over DC.
To add to this, imagine that pulley on the end is connected to another pulley through a few gears. When it spins one way, it turns the last pulley one way. When it spins the other, it meshes with another gear to turn the last pulley the same way.
You’ve converted AC current into DC current, which you can use to drive a motor in one direction. This gearing is usually done via a series of diodes.
I could visualize your description of this, but ONLY because I recalled this great little Steve Mould video where he talks about a really neat toy called Spintronics. It teaches electricity through the analogy of gears, ratchets, and pulleys of a “mechanical circuit.”
So in an AC current the electrons are just jiggling back and forth? How far do they move through a wire, I’d imagine they jump like a few meters back and forth if it’s only 50/60 times per second.
@AppleMango
@D-ISS-O-CIA-TED@kbin.social
AC is actually a little easier to explain.
Imagine you’re holding each end of a rope that is looped around a pulley. When you pull on the rope with one hand, your other hand goes in the opposite direction and the pulley turns a little bit. You’ve transfered a little bit of work to the pulley, which can be used to do other things. But “you” have only moved a little bit. You pull your stretched hand in, and you other hand goes out and the pulley does a little more work. Now do this movement 60 times a second (50 in some parts of the world), and you’ve just discovered alternating current electricity. You don’t have to move much in order to send energy over long distances, which is one of the advantages of AC over DC.
To add to this, imagine that pulley on the end is connected to another pulley through a few gears. When it spins one way, it turns the last pulley one way. When it spins the other, it meshes with another gear to turn the last pulley the same way.
You’ve converted AC current into DC current, which you can use to drive a motor in one direction. This gearing is usually done via a series of diodes.
I could visualize your description of this, but ONLY because I recalled this great little Steve Mould video where he talks about a really neat toy called Spintronics. It teaches electricity through the analogy of gears, ratchets, and pulleys of a “mechanical circuit.”
So in an AC current the electrons are just jiggling back and forth? How far do they move through a wire, I’d imagine they jump like a few meters back and forth if it’s only 50/60 times per second.