Electric vocabulary - James Sheils

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/electric-vo...

We all know the words around electricity, "charge," "positive," "battery" and more. But where do they come from and what do they really mean? Let the history of these words illuminate the physics of electric phenomena.

Lesson by James Sheils, animation by TED-Ed.

• Category

  Education

[Ligermorph]

After this battery of shocking information I currently feel positively enlightened and I just can't resist to discharge a pun ;-)

(Too much? Apologies, didn't mean to rub you people the wrong way.)

[DaveNF2G]

Does anybody think before criticizing videos? Tesla is irrelevant to the topic of the video, which is the origins of TERMINOLOGY, not applications to technology.

[mike kendall]

lol.

[Adrian Cabada]

no no not enough lol



[fukidngan]

I wish I saw this seven years ago when I was studying physic 

[Terraqueous Onkos]

Very good, concise, informational, interesting. Though I'm not completely familiar with the topic, the information seems good.

[TheBelmontClan]

Huh, the universal physic, is there such a thing as obtainable utopia? If not, then why is happiness always in pursuit of it? Could it be there simply is not enough discussion of balance within the human condition? Has there ever been? It's always been one side vs. the other with ultimately no winners, has it not?

[cwjakesteel]

Thanks!

[jamesthenabignumber]

They didn't invent any new vocabulary for fundamental electrical theory...

[jamesthenabignumber]

Hi cwjakesteel. I wrote and narrated the video, so I can help with your question. Franklin simply guessed which material had an excessive of electrical fluid (and was 'positive'). When electrons were measured, it was found that they move the other way - so a positive material has too few electrons. Franklin didn't have the technology to discover this at the time, so he took a 50/50 guess that happened to be incorrect! Hope that helps.

[Ivanna Yakovlyeva]

this helped me very well

[cwjakesteel]

Wait...there's something I don't understand. About the last part of conventional current. It was said that he found that the electrical fluid was flowing in the opposite direction. But it wasn't stated earlier which direction franklin gave it. Because all they knew was what was like and what was opposite. And the current in the small gap moved too fast to see its direction. So how did they decide which direction the current flowed?