How does AC electricity travel anywhere if it is going “back and forth”?
In: Engineering
Imagine a tube filled with balls.
I can push the balls back and forth and they will move at the other end even though I’m not there.
That’s a cable. The balls are charges in the cable.
If I make a loop with the tube, so that when I push the balls inside the tube, they will move around the loop, that’s a circuit.
When I apply a voltage the balls are pushed. At the other end, the balls impart a force… that’s how we make electricity do things at the other end of a cable.
It doesn’t matter if I keep pushing the balls in the same direction, or if I push them one way and then the other way. The other end still has balls moving past it that are imparting energy through their movement. With a little inventiveness, I can use that energy to do other things, no matter which way the balls move, or if the direction of the balls changes 50/60 times a second.
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