AC electricity, otherwise known as "alternating current" is the type of electricity commonly used in homes and businesses throughout the world. While the flow of electrons through a wire in direct current (DC) electricity is continuous in one direction, the current in AC electricity alternates in direction. The back-and-forth motion occurs between 50 and 60 times per second, depending on the electrical system of the country. AC is created by a generator, which determines the frequency. What is special about alternating current is that the voltage in can be readily changed, thus making it more suitable for long-distance transmission than DC electricity. But also, alternating current can employ capacitors and inductors in electronic circuitry, allowing for a wide range of applications.
Electrons have negative (-) electrical charges. Since opposite charges attract, they will move toward an area consisting of positive (+) charges. This movement is made easier in an electrical conductor, such as a metal wire.
With DC electricity, connecting a wire from the negative (-) terminal of a battery to the positive (+) will cause the negative charged electrons to rush through the wire to the positive charged side. The same thing happens with a DC generator, where the motion of coiled wire through a magnetic field pushes electrons out of one terminal and attracts electrons to the other terminal.
With an alternating current generator, a slightly different configuration alternates the push and pull of each generator terminal. Thus the electricity in the wire moves in one direction for a while and then reverses its direction when the generator armature is in a different position.
When Nikola Tesla discovered alternating current, he had great difficulty convincing men of his time to believe in it. Thomas Edison was in favor of direct current (DC) electricity and opposed alternating current strenuously. Tesla eventually sold his rights to his alternating current patents to George Westinghouse for $1,000,000. After paying off his investors, Tesla spent his remaining funds on his other inventions and culminated his efforts in a major breakthrough in 1899 at Colorado Springs by transmitting 100 million volts of high-frequency electric power wirelessly over a distance of 26 miles at which he lit up a bank of 200 light bulbs and ran one electric motor! With this souped up version of his Tesla coil, Tesla claimed that only 5% of the transmitted energy was lost in the process. But broke of funds again, he looked for investors to back his project of broadcasting electric power in almost unlimited amounts to any point on the globe. The method he would use to produce this wireless power was to employ the earth's own resonance with its specific vibrational frequency to conduct AC electricity via a large electric oscillator. When J.P. Morgan agreed to underwrite Tesla's project, a strange structure was begun and almost completed near Wardenclyffe in Long Island, N.Y. Looking like a huge lattice-like, wooden oil derrick with a mushroom cap, it had a total height of 200 feet. Then suddenly, Morgan withdrew his support to the project in 1906, and eventually the structure was dynamited and brought down in 1917.
AC Electricity Information
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