Changing Circuits
The Blobz guide to Electric Circuits
An electric circuit is a path for the transmission of electric current. When electric current moves through a circuit, electrical energy in the current is transferred to devices that change it into other forms of energy that can do work, such as providing power to lights, appliances, and other devices. Electric circuits may be simple or complex, but all circuits have three main components: wires that carry the current through the circuit; a device such as a lamp or motor that uses the current to do some type of work; and a power source, such as a battery or generator.
There are two main types of electric circuits—series circuits and parallel circuits:
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology.
Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he displayed remarkable imagination and creativity as well as a poetic touch. Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor, and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with Thomas Edison, but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
Electricity
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