Selects: How Electricity Works

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

0:31app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:01John Polk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's Josh, and for this week's Select, I've chosen our 2014 episode on electricity. And I chose it as a kind of Casey Kasem-esque special dedication to one of our younger listeners, Charlie Pendergrast, who wrote in with a bunch of good ideas, one of which was electricity. Well, rather than just send them a link and being boring, I thought I'd share it as a select for everybody to enjoy. So, if you enjoy this select, you can thank Charlie. Thanks, Charlie.

1:43Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:52Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. Chuck's wearing his last chance garage hat, which means that all is right with the world. Yeah. You know, if Chuck's not wearing that hat, who knows what's going on? Yeah. I thought I lost this thing. Oh, when? Once, yeah. I think I vaguely remember that. Dude, I freaked. You were, yeah, you were crying. I was on the phone with Delta and everything. I was like, oh, here it is. It's on my head. In your back pocket. Like Bruce Springsteen. That's right. How you doing? Great. Chuck? Yes. Let's talk about electricity.

2:30Electricity, electricity. I've had the Talking Heads song in my head. Which one? Electricity. Oh, okay. Where all he sees are little dots. I thought you were going to say Once in a Lifetime. No, that's... What is that called? Once in a Lifetime? Yeah. Yeah, I've been singing the Schoolhouse Rock electricity song over and over in my head. What about the Electric Company theme song? I haven't been singing that. But do you remember it? Yeah, I was Electric Company over Sesame Street even. Oh, yeah, I didn't think there had to be like a, you know, I didn't know it was like the Stones or the Beatles, you know?

3:07No, it's, and the correct answer there is the Who, by the way. What do you mean? Like that's the one you go for? Stones or Beatles, the Who. Is that right? No, I mean, yeah, I love the Who. Do you? But I'm with you. I don't see the need to rank things like that. Well, plus the electric company came on after Sesame Street, I think. Yeah, it skewed slightly older, I think. Sesame Street, to me, felt like, you know, six, seven, eight-year-olds. Electric companies were like eight, nine, ten, twelve. And then even younger than Sesame Street was Pinwheel, if I remember correctly. That was after your time.

3:41Okay. Pinwheel was pretty cute. But it was like little kids, and then Sesame Street was like little kids. And then Electric Company was like cool. Yeah, and Romper Room was kind of pre-Sesame Street even. So was that the one with Raggedy Ann and Andy? I don't remember. I just remember it was very immature. Yeah. It was very childish. I think Raggedy Ann and Andy were in that. Well, at any rate, we've angered enough people now. I know. I have an intro for this one. Great. Okay, you ready? Mm-hmm. About 13.8 billion years ago, a little something called the Big Bang happened, and the universe was created.

4:18So says you. So says a lot of people. Yeah. You know, we weren't around. Nobody saw it. But it's been detected, and it's strongly suspected by scientists that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and that it came from something called the Big Bang, which, by the way, I would love to do an episode on. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. And under the auspices of the Big Bang theory, not the TV show but the actual theory, at that moment, all of the energy in the entire universe was created right then. Boom. Bam. Ever since that point, no more energy has been created, and none of that energy has been destroyed.

5:02But it changes states. It changes shapes. It can be locked up in different places. It can be transferred from one place to another via some natural ways, like convection, conduction, radiation. Yeah. And like I said, it can be stored in stuff. Like, it can be stored in your body, right? Fat is potential energy that can be burned and used for energy to carry out work. Yeah. Which is all we're looking to do is work. That's right. We use energy to carry out work, whether it's digging a shovel or lighting a light bulb. That's what energy does. It produces work, right? Yeah. Okay. We figured out along the way that we don't have to wait around for radiation or convection or conduction to do its thing to provide energy because we'd have a lot of waiting to do.

5:54We wouldn't be in the computer age right now if it weren't for something called electricity. Yes. Which is basically how humans have figured out how to harness converting energy from one type of another and then transmitting it a very long distance. Yeah. Because electricity isn't a primary energy source like the sun or solar radiation or nuclear energy or even the flow of water, kinetic energy. No, it's created. Yeah, it's a secondary energy source. It's a carrier. That's right. So electricity carries energy from one point to another. And if you understand that, you understand the very basis of what we're going to talk about today.

6:36Yeah. Like we've figured out how to generate electricity to carry energy to produce work down the line. That's right. That's my intro. Which is usually mechanical energy is what's produced. Right. By a machine. Yeah. So think about this. If you capture mechanical energy like water spinning a turbine, which we'll talk about, in Niagara Falls, that's not going to do anything to light your light bulb 200 miles away. No, not by itself. No, unless you connect the two. You send the work produced, the energy captured in Niagara Falls down to your light bulb, and that's what we do using electricity. That's right.

7:21Yeah, it's pretty simple. Actually, it seems complicated, but it's not. No. Just electrons moving around. Yeah, let's talk about electrons, man. Let's talk about the atom. Well, should we talk about the history of this stuff? Yes, let's. Back in the olden days, in ancient times, there were dudes messing around with energy and static electricity without even knowing what they were doing. Right. They didn't understand it. But that doesn't mean that they weren't playing around with it. No, and getting zapped because they're messing with static electricity. That's right, which we'll explain all that later too.

7:58But there was one dude called Thalus of Miletus. He was a philosopher in Greece. And in 600 BC, he is thought to have been the first dude to mess around with electrostatic, static electricity, by rubbing amber with fur. And he noticed that dust and feathers and things were attracted to it. he didn't know what the heck was going on, but he knew something was up. Right, and the amber plays a pretty big role. It's actually amber, the Latin or I'm sorry, is it Greek? Greek. The Greek word for amber is electron. Yeah, with a K. Yeah. Which makes it look way heavy metal. Yeah. So our word electricity is derived from the Greek word for amber from that first experiment with static electricity.

8:44Yeah, and it was actually coined by a dude named William Gilbert. He was an Englishman, a physician, and he was studying sort of the same things with static electricity that Miletus was, and he was the first person to say it's electric when he saw these forces at work. With an exclamation point and his finger in the air. Can you see it? We should probably differentiate. There's a couple of types of electricity. There's static electricity, and then there's current electricity, right? And current electricity is what we are able to generate artificially. Static electricity exists in nature, just naturally.

9:23Yes. And that was the first experiments carried out. Then there's other types of current electricity like lightning. But at this time, when these people are messing with electric or static electricity or saying it's electric for the first time, the concept of electricity was that it was fluid. Well, it was fluid. He was on the right track. Something is flowing, but they thought it was literally a fluid, which in those days was called a humor. And he said it leaves what he called then an effluvium, which is atmosphere around it. When you create this rubbing action, it removes that fluid. Right.

10:04But it wasn't fluid. They were not dummies back then, but they were just figuring it all out. No, they weren't dummies because even Ben Franklin thought it was a fluid. It was the prevailing idea or concept of electricity. And Ben Franklin and a couple of his contemporaries, including a guy named Thomas Francois Dallabarde, were studying electricity big time. And it was when they really investigated lightning that our understanding of current electricity started to take shape. Yeah, the old story of Ben Franklin flying his kite may or may not have happened. There are some people that think that didn't happen now.

10:46If he didn't do it, other people did. There were guys who died carrying out that experiment. Yeah. It was definitely carried out. I don't know if Ben Franklin did or not. Yeah, that's sort of the story that he flew the kite with the key. And some people think it either didn't go down like that or didn't go down with him at all. Right, right. But it's a great story either way. Yeah, and I think he at least proposed it, the experiment. Well, yeah, and he was the first guy to say that electricity has a positive and negative charge and that it flows from positive to negative. So he's a smart guy. Very smart.

11:20He's a polymath. Then there was another smart dude named Coulomb, Charles Augustin de Coulomb, and he is the one that wrote Coulomb's Law. And he said, like charges repel, opposite charges attract, and that's kind of like the basis for it all. Yeah, and the force of these charges is proportional to their product. So if you multiply the charges, they are going to be very strong or cancel one another out or push one another away. Yeah, he basically said, you can now calculate this. Right. Because of my handy-dandy little law. Yeah, and with a boom. He said boom. Not bang. Okay. That came earlier.

12:02later on a guy named j.j thompson in 1897 said at a science conference hey i found something smaller than the atom and everyone said silly man atoms are invisible you can't it even means invisible you liar and he said no i promise it's there's something smaller it's got a negative charge and i'm going to call it a corpuscle no he didn't yeah it's latin for small bodies and then I don't know who later said, let's change it to electron. Yeah, it sounds way cooler. But the discovery of the electron was basically the birth of what we know as electricity today. Yeah. The understanding of the electron is what it's all about.

12:44And would you say like 1897? Yes. So before that time, I guess he didn't understand the electron, but he understood electricity. A guy named Michael Faraday was working on the case. Stud. Yeah, basically everybody's like, Ben Franklin, electricity, hand in hand. Really, it's Michael Faraday, who's British, who really came to lay the foundation for electrifying the world. He created the first dynamo, which was a generator, which we'll talk about. First electric motor? Yeah. He got electricity, and he explained it to other people very well. Can you even fathom how smart these people were? No. To be that in the dark and figuring all this subatomic stuff out back then?

13:36Hats off. Top hats off to these guys. Last Chance Garage hat off. Yeah. And back on. Like, I have trouble understanding it now. Right. When it's explained through, like, Kids for Science websites. We're not inventing this, figuring this stuff out for the first time. Right, exactly. And it's a pretty dangerous field to try to figure out blind, too, you know? Yeah, I mean, more than one scientist got a shock from a Leyden jar. Oh, yeah. And you can make those. Did you make those in science class? No. Yeah. You can make those. Well, we should say a Leyden jar is a very primitive capacitor. You use a metal rod in a jar.

14:10Like a nail. That's sunk into, like, some water, and it can store a charge. Yeah. And I think Ben Franklin's kite experiment attached the kite to, or a rod or something, to a Leyden jar to store the charge, too. If that happened. Right. But again, he did make the proposal. It's whether or not he carried it out is a good question. All right, I guess now we can get to atoms. Finally. Atoms are very tiny, and they make up molecules, and molecules make up everything you see. Yeah, atoms are the building block of matter. That's right. And Adam, remember we're always talking about nature loves homeostasis?

14:47Oh, man, does it? Is it? you've got a balance that nature always seeks. Tries to achieve it. Same with atoms, or atoms are no exception, I should say. Within an atom, you have a nucleus, which is made up of protons and neutrons. Protons are positively charged particles. Neutrons are neutral. And then orbiting that nucleus, making the cool atom symbol, are electrons. And they're negatively charged. That's right. And when you have an equal number of protons to electrons, you have a neutral atom. Yeah. There's no potential energy there. It's just in balance. Yeah. And a lot of stuff is like that.

15:35A lot of stuff is in balance. Some stuff is not. Well, some stuff falls out of balance easier than other stuff. Well, yeah. The electrons, sometimes they're super tightly bound to the atom, and they don't want to leave the house. They want to stick around. Sometimes they're crazy teenagers, and the slightest energy and movement makes them jump off from the atom and just say, I want to go attach myself to something else. They go on rumspringa. Yeah. Yeah, and it depends on the material. And those types of material that have either tightly connected or loosely connected atoms either end up conducting electricity very well or don't conduct electricity very well, so they act as either electrical conductors or electrical insulators.

16:24Yeah, like if you pick up a stick off the ground, it's electrons like staying close to home, so it's not going to conduct electricity. If you pick up a metal rod, those electrons are crazy. Loose. And they like to go off and do those things that teenage electrons do, and therefore it does conduct electricity very well. Under normal circumstances, when you pick up that rod or you pick up that stick, the electrons are staying put no matter what. But we figured out along the way, thanks to the work of all of the people from the Greeks to Faraday to Ben Franklin to your guy with the corpuscle idea.

17:02Yeah. JJ, what's his name? Yeah, JJ. JJ Corpuscle. I think it was Thompson. So thanks to the work of all of these people, we figured out how to knock electrons loose. and it's ingenious and simple, but it's also very complex. And it involves the relationship between magnetism and electricity.

17:33New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the How to Money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year, and on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health.

18:08Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and just start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind, inside and out, healthy. We human beings, all we want is connection.

18:47We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, this is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name.

19:25In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy as in compassion. If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

20:05So Chuck. Yes. We're talking about knocking electrons loose, which is ultimately the basis of producing electricity. Yeah, like when you were a kid in elementary school, you probably did the little balloon trick where you make static electricity and make the balloon stick to your sweater. Right. All you're doing, you're rubbing that balloon on your sweater and electrons are jumping from that balloon onto your sweater. And now there are two different charges going on because you're overcharged. The balloon is now undercharged. And because opposite charges attract, it sticks to your sweater. Right.

20:38And that's static electricity. And static, you know, you have static and dynamic, and dynamic indicates motion. Static indicates staying still. And they use that to describe this type of electricity because the electrons don't flow. They just sit there and wait for a connection. Like when you touch something that's charged, like a doorknob, after you've shuffled with your feet in socks over carpet, when you touch that doorknob, you're forming that connection. And all of a sudden, the balance is achieved once more, and the electrons flow. Like you're literally a conductor of electricity in that moment.

21:12Right. So with current electricity, those electrons move. They move along a conductive material, say like copper wire or something like that. That's a hot one. Right. So let's talk about how you produce an electrical current, right? Okay. Let's talk about generators and turbines and all that awesome stuff. It sounds like you need to generate that electricity with a generator. Right. I think that's what generators are called, why they're called that. Yeah, it's funny just how basic some of these things are. Like you say, a computer. Right. But you've heard it so many times, you take it for granted and it loses its meaning.

21:50It's like looking at a word too frequently. Yeah, I think a lot of these words are like that. Like a generator or a... A corpuscle. Or a... What's it called when they stop down the electricity, which we'll get to? Transformer. Yeah, it transforms something. But you say them so much, you're like, what's a transformer do? Right. You know? Yeah. Anyway, I've been reading too much science for dummies, I think. All right, so generators. Well, I guess it all comes down to magnetism in the case of generators. And if you want to listen to two shows, lightning and magnetism, before this one, it might help you understand electricity a little bit more.

22:33All right. So just go listen to those. We'll wait. We'll do that right now. We'll wait two hours. So what I think Faraday figured out was that because of this relationship between a magnet and electricity, you can take a magnet and you can move electrons in a, say, a conductive material. You can knock the electrons loose, basically, using a magnet. Yeah, it's like what happens when you attract a paperclip to a magnet. It's just the transfer of electrons. Right. Jumping around. And you create a flow by flipping the polarity. And you can do this by rotating metal, right? Yeah. Say like a coiled copper within the two poles of a large magnet.

23:17And when you do this, you're reversing polarity all of a sudden. Yeah. And you are knocking the electrons loose in those coils. and the way that you spin the coils very quickly is by hooking the coils to say a shaft. Yeah. We kind of did this backwards. Let's start at the beginning. You want to? Sure. Okay. Let's go to Niagara Falls. Okay. Back in 1895, George Westinghouse, who is Nikola Tesla's boss, which by the way, if you want to listen to another really good podcast, go listen to that one, the Nikola Tesla one. Yeah. Remember it was all about the ACDC war between Tesla and Edison? Yeah. Good episode.

24:04Killed shocking animals to death. Yeah, it's pretty awful. What a jerk. But in 1895, George Westinghouse set up a hydroelectric power plant along the Niagara Falls. Yeah. And what he did was he had a means of taking the movement of water, which is kinetic energy. The water at the top of the falls has potential energy, and then once it falls over, that potential turns to kinetic energy. Well, Westinghouse set up a turbine to catch this movement of water, which is actual energy, and have that movement spin a turbine, a propeller, a fan. Yeah, it's the same concept as an old gristmill, except it's not creating energy.

24:47It's just moving the stones that grind the wheat or corn. Right, the gristmill is. In this case, it's capturing that energy, or it's transferring it, we should say, by converting that kinetic energy from the water into mechanical energy, spinning the turbine. The turbine is connected to that shaft I was talking about where we suddenly changed course. And at the end of that shaft, which is now spinning thanks to the turbine, thanks to the movement of the water, is some coiled copper. And that coiled copper is spinning within those two magnets. Yeah, that's the key. Right, and because of that, the electrons are being knocked loose.

25:23You have a power line leading from the coiled copper out, and all of a sudden, you have an electric current. Yeah, and if you've ever been to the Hoover Dam or something, you don't have to have a waterfall or a river to make this thing work. That's why they build dams. You stop up the water, and then at the base of the dam, you have the means to release that water, and then it becomes that flowing water. Right, and then also for thermal power plants, They use nuclear power to create a nuclear reaction to produce heat, or they burn coal to produce heat. And then they use that heat to heat water, and then they use that water to create steam, and then that steam turns a turbine.