eli5: how does AC power provide power when it’s just shifting back and forth? Don’t you need to have current going in one direction

Question

eli5: how does AC power provide power when it’s just shifting back and forth? Don’t you need to have current going in one direction

In: 67

Answer 1

Say you wanted a waterwheel to turn, it can turn just as much whether the river is flowing one way or the other.

Easier to think of electricity as something moving along a wire, and when the current stops it just stops moving, rather than disappearing.

It’s not a perfect analogy but that’s how it was explained to me.