All bout Lectricity!!!

[olhillbilly]

Today's scientific question is:

What in the world is electricity?



And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?



Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important

electrical lesson.



On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach

your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental

fillings.



Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in

pain?



This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but

we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to teach them

an important electrical lesson.



It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you

scuffed your feet, you picked up a batch of "electrons", which are

very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so

they will attract dirt.



The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your

finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's

filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet,

thus completing the circuit.



Amazing electronic fact:



If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching

anything, you would build up so many electrons that your

finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about,

unless you have carpeting.



Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights,

radios, mixers, etc. for granted, hundreds of years ago people did

not have any of these things, which is just as well because there

was no place to plug them in.



Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin,

who flew a kite in a lightning storm and received a serious

electrical shock.



This proved that lightning was powered by the same forces as

carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he

started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as,

"A penny saved is a penny earned".



Eventually, he had to be given a job running the post office.



After Franklin, came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names

have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary

Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers

conducted many important electrical experiments.



For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth)

that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a

frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked,

even though it was no longer actually attached to the frog, which

was dead anyway.



Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of

amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a

frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of

metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just

like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a

stone.



But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of all was Thomas Edison, who

was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little

formal education and lived in New Jersey.



Edison's first major invention, in 1877, was the phonograph, which

could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it

basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.



But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented

the electric company.



Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple

electrical circuit:



The electric company sends electricity through a wire to a

customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through

another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it

right back to the customer again.



This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same

batch of electricity thousands of times a day and NEVER GET

CAUGHT, since very few customers take the time to examine their

electricity closely.



In fact, the last year in which any new electricity was generated

in the United States was 1937: the electric companies have been

merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much

free time to apply for rate increases.



Today, thanks to men like Edison and Franklin, and frogs like

Galvani's, we receive almost unlimited benefits from electricity.



For example, in the past decade scientists developed the laser, an

electronic appliance that emits a beam of light so powerful that

it can vaporize a bulldozer 2,000 yards away, yet so precise that

doctors can use it to perform delicate operations on the human

eyeball, (provided they remember to change the power setting from

"VAPORIZE BULLDOZER" to "DELICATE").

[gonecatfishing]

Hard to separate fiction from fact. Does make one wonder what happens to it after the bulb lights up. Unless Newton"s law is applied...Let's go fishing , much simpler to understand.

[susiekue]

For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light.

However recent information from Bell Labs has proven otherwise.

Electric bulbs don't emit light, they suck dark. Thus, they now call these bulbs dark-suckers. The dark theory, according to a Bell Labs spokesman, proves the existence of dark, that dark has mass heavier than that of light, and that dark is faster than light. The basis of the dark-sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck dark.

Take for example the dark-suckers in the room where you are.

There is less dark right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the dark sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark.

Dark-suckers in a parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck dark than the ones in this room.

As with all things, dark suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot on a full dark sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You will notice after the first use the wick turns black, representing all the dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive dark suckers have a very limited range.

There are also portable dark suckers. The bulbs in these can't handle all the dark by themselves, and must be aided by a dark storage unit. When the dark storage unit is full, it must either be emptied or replaced before the portable dark sucker can be operated again. Dark has mass. When dark goes into a dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating dark sucker. Candles present a special problem, as the dark must travel in the solid wick instead of through glass. Thus, it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim deeper and deeper, you notice it gets darker and darker. When you reach a depth of approximately fifty feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top. The immense power of the dark can be utilized to man's advantage. We can collect the dark that has settled to the bottom of the lakes and push it through turbines which generate electricity and help push dark to the ocean, where it maybe safely stored.

In conclusion, Bell Labs stated that dark suckers make all our live much easier. So, the next time you look at an electric bulb, remember that it is indeed a dark sucker!

[Sinker]

I spose that's why it's a law that we cover old abandoned wells; ta keep th dark stored til we need it.I spect that's also why ya see nuthin but dark when ya shut yer eyes; sept fer those flashes of light tryin ta git thru yer eyeballs. An I reckon th notion of "bright idea" comes from a flasha light in that dark behind th eyelids. An did ya know that th lectric chair was th bright idea of a "circuit" judge?
There may even be a windfall involved in this revelation from HB an Susiekue. Mebbe we awta all buy up all th dark we can git our hands on before its all gone! It awta be cheap while its still perty common