So I fire up the ‘ol web browser to write a blog entry, and end up on memepool. Memepool is one of my favorite websites, but I hardly ever visit it because there is really no point. No point at all. OK, the real reason is that I just don’t often find myself thinking “What website should I visit now?”
Well, from memepool, I found myself at HowStuffWorks.com. And that, my friends, is where I spent the last hour. I learned a ton of stuff! My two favorites so far were How Power Grids Work, which taught me a bunch of stuff about electricity that I didn’t know, including what fuses are, and then How Hypnosis Works, which was mostly stuff I’d known or read various places, but seems very comprehensive and authoritative. The next time I have the “is hypnosis real” debate with someone, I’ll know where to point them!
One question I didn’t find the answer to (yet) is What is electricity? I’ve always wondered this. They talk about it in terms of volts and amps and waves, but what is a volt? What is an amp? And is electricity basically the same as sound, just smaller? My inquiring mind wants to know! (Of course, if I really wanted to know, google is less than a click away.)
Tomorrow I get to find out how to replace my roof! (This time my enthusiasm is faked.) It will be nice, however, not to have to put down pots and pans in our laundry room every time it rains. My dad is coming over to help me, and with any luck there’ll be a couple of other guys here as well. (If my loser brother doesn’t show up I’m going to have to kill him.) I’ve taken thursday and friday off, so this roofing gig will be full time for the next two or three days at least. Wish me luck!
Okay, here’s my B- in electrodynamics:
Electric charge is a fundamental part of nature that only quantum physicists understand. But in normal human experience, electric charge comes from electrons and protons, which move around in materials according to Quantum Chemistry Magick. In metals, many electrons are free to move around quite a lot – that’s why copper is such a good thing to make wires from.
An ampere (amp) is a unit of current (how many electrons are moving past a particular point in space, during some amount of time). A volt is a unit of potential energy – sort of a measure of how much happier an electron would be someplace else. It’s analogous to height above the earth: a penny wants to fall down to the ground (lower its potential) and a penny dropped off the Sears Tower will hit the sidewalk with greater force than a penny dropped off the top of a car or something. Which is why you don’t electrocute people with AA batteries. More or less – I’m oversimplifying a bit probably.
And I have no idea what you’re trying to get at with the sound question…
Oh, and good luck roofing!
waves and shit… that’s what I was asking about with the sound question. I’ve read about how electricity travels in waves, and I was wondering how simmilar that is to sound waves. Presumably sound waves are made of atoms (in air) and electrical waves are made of electons… presumably.
And then there are microwaves and radio waves… from what I understand, they’re not made up of atoms, right? I guess the thought came about because I had understood at one point how radio waves are simmilar to light waves.. just at higher/(lower?) spectrums… is that right? And is all that just completely unrelated to electricity traveling in waves?
I’ll post about the roofing soon!