It has always been a question of mine that ive never gotten answered in a way that I understand. Like, how do you go from motion in my generator to electricity for my toaster? how does the energy go from spinny-magnet in the box outside to lightning in my walls? I don’t understand.
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A bunch of kids stand in a long line. If I bring a gross bug near one of them, that kid tries to move away from it which pushes the next kid forward, who in turn pushes the next and so on. At the end of the line the last kid falls over and screams.
Moving a magnet near a wire (bug near kid) causes electricity to move down the wire (kids pushing each other). I don’t get this for free because I have to move the bug which takes energy. Make the wire (line of kids) long enough and you can move energy a long distance.
Just like pushing more kids over at the end of the line makes the screaming louder, the more electricity you push through a thin wire the more heat and light it makes, so you can make toasters and old incandescent light bulbs work.
This is a gross (pun intended) oversimplification and the analogy is not technically correct, but I hope it gets the point across.
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