Common Science Part 27

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 109. When the comb is rubbed on the coat, it becomes charged with electricity.]

OBJECTS NEGATIVELY AND POSITIVELY CHARGED WITH ELECTRICITY. There are probably electrons in everything. But when there is just the usual number of electrons in an object, it acts in an ordinary way and we say that it is not charged with electricity. If there are more than the usual number of electrons on an object, however, we say that it is _negatively charged_, or that it has a negative charge of electricity on it. But if there are fewer electrons than usual in an object, we say that it has a positive charge of electricity on it, or that it is _positively charged_.

You might expect a "negative charge" to indicate fewer electrons than usual, not more. But people called the charge "negative" long before they knew anything about electrons; and it is easier to keep the old name than to change all the books that have been written about electricity. So we still call a charge "negative" when there are unusually _many_ electrons, and we call it "positive" when there are unusually _few_. A _negative charge_ means that more electrons are present than usual. A _positive charge_ means that fewer electrons are present than usual.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 110. The charged comb picks up pieces of paper.]

Before you rubbed your comb on wool, neither the comb nor the wool was charged; both had just the usual number of electrons. But when you rubbed them together, you rubbed some of the electrons off the wool on to the comb. Then the comb had a negative charge; that is, it had too many electrons--too many little particles of electricity.

When you brought the comb near the hair, the hair had fewer electrons than the comb. Whenever one object has more electrons on it than another, the two objects are pulled toward each other; so there was an attraction between the comb and the hair, and the hair came over to the comb. As soon as it touched the comb, some of the extra electrons jumped from the comb to the hair. The electrons could not get off the hair easily, so they stayed there. Electrons repel each other--drive each other away. So when you had a number of electrons on the end of the comb and a number on the end of the hair, they pushed each other away, and the hair flew from the comb. But when you pinched the hair, the electrons could get off it to your moist hand, which lets electricity through it fairly easily. Then the comb had extra electrons on it and the hair did not; so the comb pulled the hair over toward it again.

When you brought the charged comb near your ear, some of the electrons on the comb pushed the others off to your ear, and you heard them snap as they rushed through the air, making it vibrate.

HOW LIGHTNING AND THUNDER ARE CAUSED. In thunderstorms the strong currents of rising air blow some of the forming raindrops in the clouds into bits of spray. The tinier droplets get more than their share of electrons when this happens and are carried on up to higher clouds. In this way clouds become charged with electricity. One cloud has on it many more electrons than another cloud that is made, perhaps, of lower, larger droplets. The electricity leaps from the cloud that has the greater number of electrons to the cloud that has the less number, or it leaps from the heavily charged cloud down to a tree or house or the ground. You see the electricity leap and call it _lightning_. Much more leaps, however, than leaped from the comb to your ear, and so it makes a very much louder snap. The snap is caused in this way: As the electric spark leaps through the air, it leaves an empty s.p.a.ce or vacuum immediately behind it. The air from all sides rushes into the vacuum and collides there; then it bounces back. This again leaves a partial vacuum; so the air rushes in once more, coming from all sides at once, and again bounces back. This starts the air vibrations which we call _sound_. Then the sound is echoed from cloud to cloud and from the clouds to the earth and back again, and we call it _thunder_.

The electricity you have been reading about and experimenting with in this section is called _static electricity_. "Static" means standing still. The electricity you rubbed up to the surface of the comb or gla.s.s stayed still until it jumped to the bit of paper or hair; then it stayed still on that. This was the only kind of electricity most people knew anything about until the nineteenth century; and it is not of any great use. Electricity must be flowing through things to do work. That is why people could not invent electric cars and electric lights and telephones before they knew how to make electricity flow steadily rather than just to stand still on one thing until it jumped across to another and stood there. In the next chapter we shall take up the ways in which electrons are made to flow and to do work.

_APPLICATION 48._ Explain why the stroking of a cat's back will sometimes cause sparks and make the cat's hairs stand apart; why combing sometimes makes your hairs fly apart. Both of these effects are best secured on a dry day, because on a damp day the water particles in the air will let the electrons pa.s.s to them as fast as they are rubbed up to the surface of the hair.

INFERENCE EXERCISE

Explain the following:

291. If you shuffle your feet on a carpet in clear, cold weather and then touch a person's nose or ear, a slight spark pa.s.ses from your finger and stings him.

292. If you stay out in the cold long, you get chilled through.

293. The air and earth in a greenhouse are warmed by the sun through the gla.s.s even when it is cold outside and when the gla.s.s itself remains cold.

294. When you hold a blade of gra.s.s taut between your thumbs and blow on it, you get a noise.

295. Shadows are usually black.

296. Some women keep magnets with which to find lost needles.

297. You can grasp objects much more firmly with pliers than with your fingers.

298. If the gla.s.s in a mirror is uneven, the image of your face is unnatural.

299. A sweater clings close to your body.

300. Kitchens, bathrooms, and hospitals should have painted walls.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELECTRICITY

SECTION 33. _Making electricity flow._

What causes a battery to produce electricity?

What makes electricity come into our houses?

The kind of electricity you get from rubbing (friction) is not of much practical use, you remember. Men had to find a way to get a steady current of electricity before they could make electricity do any work for them. The difference between static electricity--when it leaps from one thing to another--and flowing electricity is a good deal like the difference between a short shower of rain and a river. Both rain and river are water, and the water of each is moving from one place to another; but you cannot get the raindrops to make any really practical machine go, while the rivers can do real work by turning the wheels in factories and mills.

Within the past century two devices for making electricity flow and do work have been perfected: One of these is the electric battery; the other is the dynamo.

THE ELECTRIC BATTERY. A battery consists of two pieces of different kinds of metal, or a metal and some carbon, in a chemical solution.

If you hang a piece of zinc and a carbon, such as comes from an arc light, in some water, and then dissolve sal ammoniac in the water, you will have a battery. Some of the molecules of the sal ammoniac divide into two parts when the sal ammoniac gets into the water, and the molecules continue to divide as long as the battery is in use or until it "wears out." One part of each molecule has an unusually large number of electrons; the other part has unusually few. The parts with unusually large numbers of electrons gather around the zinc; so the zinc is _negatively charged_,--it has more than the ordinary number of electrons. The part of the sal ammoniac with unusually few electrons goes over to the carbon; so the carbon is _positively charged_,--it has fewer than the ordinary number of electrons.

MAKING THE CURRENT FLOW. Now if we can make some kind of bridge between the carbon and the zinc, the electrons will flow from the place where there are many to the place where there are few. Electrons can flow through copper wire very easily. So if we fasten one end of the copper wire to the carbon and the other end to the zinc, the electrons will flow from the zinc to the carbon as long as there are more electrons on the zinc; that is, until the battery wears out.

Therefore we have a steady flow of electricity through the wire. While the electricity is flowing from one pole to the other, we can make it do work.

EXPERIMENT 64. Set up two or three Samson cells. They consist of a gla.s.s jar, an open zinc cylinder, and a smaller carbon cylinder. Dissolve a little over half a cup of sal ammoniac in water and put it into the gla.s.s jar; then fill the jar with water up to the line that is marked on it. Put the carbon and zinc which are attached to the black jar cover into the jar.

Be careful not to let the carbon touch the zinc. One of these cells will probably not be strong enough to ring a doorbell for you; so connect two or three together in series as follows:

Fasten a piece of copper wire from the carbon of the first cell to the zinc of the second. If you have three cells, fasten another piece of wire from the carbon of the second cell to the zinc of the third, as shown in Figure 111.

Fasten one end of a copper wire to the zinc of the first cell and the other end of this wire to one binding post of an electric bell. Fasten one end of another piece of copper wire to the carbon of the third cell, if you have three, and touch the other end of this wire to the free binding post of the electric bell. If you have everything connected rightly, the bell should ring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 111. A wet battery of three cells connected to ring a bell.]

DIFFERENT KINDS OF BATTERIES. There are many different kinds of batteries. The one you have just made is a simple one frequently used for doorbells. Other batteries are more complicated. Some are made with copper and zinc in a solution of copper sulfate; some, even, are made by letting electricity from a dynamo run through a solution from one lead plate to another until a chemical substance is stored on one of them; then, when the two lead plates are connected by a wire, the electrons run from one to the other. This kind of battery is called a _storage battery_, and it is much used in submarines and automobiles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 112. A battery of three dry cells.]

But all the different batteries work on the same general principle: A chemical solution divides into two parts, one with many electrons and the other with a less number. One part of the solution gathers on one pole (piece of metal in the solution) and charges it positively; the other part gathers on the other pole and charges it negatively. Then the electricity flows from one pole to the other.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE POLES. Before people knew anything about electrons, they knew that electricity flowed from one pole of a battery to the other. But they always said that it flowed from the carbon to the zinc; and they called the carbon the positive pole and the zinc the negative. Although we now know that the electrons flow from the zinc to the carbon, it is much more convenient to use the old way of speaking, as was explained on page 199. Practically, it makes no difference which way the electrons are going as long as a current of electricity is flowing through the wire from one pole of the battery to the other pole. So every one speaks of electricity as flowing from the positive pole of a battery (usually the carbon or copper) to the negative pole (usually the zinc), although the electrons actually move in the other direction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 113. A storage battery.]

Batteries make enough electricity flow to do a good deal of work. But they are rather expensive, and it takes a great many to give a flow of electricity sufficient for really heavy work, such as running street cars or lighting a city. Fortunately there is another way of getting large amounts of electricity to flow. This is by means of dynamos.

HOW A DYNAMO MAKES A CURRENT FLOW. To understand a dynamo, you must first realize that there are countless electrons in the world--perhaps all things are made entirely of them. But you remember that when we want to get these electrons to do work we must make them flow. This can be done by spinning a loop of wire between the poles of a magnet.

Whenever a loop of wire is turned between the two poles of a magnet, the magnetism pushes the electrons that are already in the wire around and around the loop. As long as we keep the loop spinning, a current of electricity flows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 114. Spinning loops of wire between the poles of a magnet causes a current of electricity to flow through the wire.]

If only one loop of wire is spun between the poles of a magnet, the current is very feeble. If you loop the wire around twice, as shown in Figure 114, the magnet acts on twice as much of the wire at the same time; so the current is stronger. If a very long piece of wire is used and is looped around many times, and the whole coil is spun rapidly between the poles of a powerful magnet, myriads of the electrons in the wire rush around and around the loops--a powerful current of electricity flows through the wire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 115. The more loops there are, the stronger the current.]