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Energy - Electricity

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Energy - Electricity

Postby TalkingPoint » Sat Mar 20, 2004 8:32 pm

Energy - Electricity


Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist who invented several significant electrical instruments. He was born in 1745. His most famous invention was the "voltaic pile" (electrochemical battery) which he invented in 1800, twenty-seven years before his death.

At approximately the same time, in Scotland, two engineers were working together to improve the efficiency of steam engines. They were Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Watt was also an inventor and, apart from having a unit of power named after him (a "watt"), also coined the term "horsepower".

Another contemporary was the German physicist, George Ohm (1789 - 1854), who established "Ohm's law" and had one of the measuring units used in electricity (the "ohm") named after him.

Electromagnetic radiation which is visible to the human eye is called "light". Before the invention of electric light people used either paraffin lamps or gas lighting. In 1870 two men, Swan and Edison, both invented the electric light, although they were not working together and did not form a partnership until 1883. Edison was American and Swan was British. It is thanks to these two pioneers of electric light that the light bulb exists today. However, light bulbs have changed and developed considerably since their invention. In the 1930s fluorescent light was invented, largely replacing the relatively inefficient older light bulbs which wasted approximately ninety per cent of the energy they received, turning only about ten per cent of it into light. Fluorescent light is considerably more efficient at illuminating interior spaces and is therefore widely used in places such as offices.

Quick Quiz
    1. Light is electromagnetic _______________ which is visible to the human eye.

    2. The American inventor who invented electric light.

    3. Metal towers which carry electrical cables and wires.

    4. The German physicist who lived from 1789 to 1854.

    5. James _______________, the Scottish engineer and inventor.
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