Look at that! Study of currents is an electricfying experience

Hello, to all the electricity users out there, and that includes most of us. Hopefully, your coffee maker went on this morning, your cell phone was charged, the toaster worked, and your car headlights went on during your dark morning commute.

All of these activities most of us depend on are driven by the movement of small subatomic particles called electrons; there is a reason the words "electron" and "electricity" are related to one another. How in the heck do we get these tiny, negatively charged electrons to move?

Hopefully, you remember that electrons are the tiny bits that surround the nucleus of an atom and that they are always moving. To generate electricity, we need to find electrons that are easy to push around, and something to push them to get them moving in one direction.

Finding an electron that we can influence is pretty easy: just find a metal. Iron, gold, silver, and mercury are metals that all have one or two electrons far from the nucleus that are like problem children, hard to keep control of, and easily influenced by strangers. These metals are called conductors, and the metal chosen for most electric current is copper.

Now we need a strange outside force to make those outer electrons move from home; that strange force or influence is magnetism.

When we move a magnet inside a loop of copper - or any other conductor - the outer electrons move in unison in one direction. Voilà, electric current! This movement of electrons back and forth (alternating current, or AC) or in one direction (direct current, or DC) is what can spin motors, heat electric coils, and make light in another place.

The movement of electrons caused by a moving magnet within conducting wires is called electromagnetic induction. Last week, we visited the four hydro plants that are in our neighborhood. The flowing water of the St. Louis River is what moves giant magnets through copper coils that make these outer electrons move in one direction.

But let's talk about Bentley- ville.

I will be volunteering at the cookie shack one night this holiday season. When the giant tree of lights starts dancing to the music, obviously the electricity that controls those lights must be very fast as it travels through the wires. Indeed, the movement of the electric energy, i.e., the electric current, is very fast, actually close to the speed of light, depending on the conductor, temperature, and the strength of electric field.

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and electric current can travel at about 96 percent of that speed, which is almost instantaneous.

The cool thing is that the actual speed of the electron moving from one copper atom to another, i.e., the electron drift, is much slower than the average snail. So while electric current is fast, the electron drift is certainly not. If we lined up the average snail and an electron at the starting line of any race, put your money on the snail - a snail is about 38 times faster than a drifting electron. But if we lined up electrons all along the race course, it would be a different story: the first electron would bump the second, then the third, then the fourth, and so on. That wave of electrons - the current- would travel at 96 percent the speed of light.

If you visit Bentleyville this year, take a second to marvel at the speed of current versus the speed of a drifting electron.

The very curious Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College science tutor Glen Sorenson was Minnesota Teacher of the Year before he retired from teaching science at Proctor High School after 30-plus years. Want more science from Glen? Find his ongoing "What's That?" videos on the FDLTCC Facebook page.