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
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Let’s use a water analogy: You put a turbine in some flowing water and the turbine spins due to the water pushing on it. The direction the turbine spins is based on the direction of the water flow and the tilt of the blades of your turbine. When the direction of the water switches, if you also switch the tilt of the turbine blades the turbine will continue to spin in the same direction. You could also put your turbine in a side channel with a series of gates that switch so the water always flows in the same direction through your side channel. Or you could hook your turbine up to a gearbox and and output shaft and just shift it into reverse gear when the water switches and the turbine direction switches so that the shaft will always rotate in the same direction.
The point is that there are a variety of engineering approaches that allow you to take back and forth motion and convert it into continuous motion. Motion is energy, and thus one can design a setup that converts this back and forth movement into one directional energy flow.
The engineering approaches used for electricity are different, but accomplish the same task so your motor will always rotate in the same direction, even though the current is switching directions and now you have a spinning electric motor that can be used to power other devices.
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