Electricity

Electricity - is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter
that has a property of electric charge. In early days, electricity was considered as being unrelated
to magnetism. Later on, many experimental results and the development of Maxwell's
equations indicated that both electricity and magnetism are from a single
phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various common phenomena are related to electricity,
including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.

Electric Charge - The presence of charge gives rise to an electrostatic force: charges exert
a force on each other, an effect that was known, though not understood, in antiquity. A
lightweight ball suspended from a string can be charged by touching it with a glass rod that has
itself been charged by rubbing with a cloth. If a similar ball is charged by the same glass rod, it is
found to repel the first: the charge acts to force the two balls apart. Two balls that are charged
with a rubbed amber rod also repel each other. However, if one ball is charged by the glass rod,
and the other by an amber rod, the two balls are found to attract each other. These phenomena
were investigated in the late eighteenth century by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, who deduced
that charge manifests itself in two opposing forms. This discovery led to the well-known
axiom: like-charged objects repel and opposite-charged objects attract.

Electric Currents - The movement of electric charge is known as an electric current, the intensity
of which is usually measured in amperes. Current can consist of any moving charged particles;
most commonly these are electrons, but any charge in motion constitutes a current. Electric
current can flow through some things, electrical conductors, but will not flow through an electrical
insulator. By historical convention, a positive current is defined as having the same direction of
flow as any positive charge it contains, or to flow from the most positive part of a circuit to the
most negative part. Current defined in this manner is called conventional current. The motion of
negatively charged electrons around an electric circuit, one of the most familiar forms of current,
is thus deemed positive in the opposite direction to that of the electrons. However, depending on
the conditions, an electric current can consist of a flow of charged particles in either direction, or
even in both directions at once. The positive-to-negative convention is widely used to simplify this
situation.

Electric Field - The concept of the electric field was introduced by Michael Faraday. An electric field
is created by a charged body in the space that surrounds it, and results in a force exerted on any
other charges placed within the field. The electric field acts between two charges in a similar
manner to the way that the gravitational field acts between two masses, and like it, extends
towards infinity and shows an inverse square relationship with distance. However, there is an
important difference. Gravity always acts in attraction, drawing two masses together, while the
electric field can result in either attraction or repulsion. Since large bodies such as planets
generally carry no net charge, the electric field at a distance is usually zero. Thus, gravity is the
dominant force at distance in the universe, despite being much weaker.

Electric Potential - The concept of electric potential is closely linked to that of the electric field. A
small charge placed within an electric field experiences a force, and to have brought that charge
to that point against the force requires work. The electric potential at any point is defined as the
energy required to bring a unit test charge from an infinite distance slowly to that point. It is
usually measured in volts, and one volt is the potential for which one joule of work must be
expended to bring a charge of one coulomb from infinity. This definition of potential, while formal,
has little practical application, and a more useful concept is that of electric potential difference,
and is the energy required to move a unit charge between two specified points.

Electro Magnets - This relationship between magnetic fields and currents is extremely important,
for it led to Michael Faraday's invention of the electric motor in 1821. Faraday's homopolar
motor consisted of a permanent magnet sitting in a pool of mercury. A current was allowed
through a wire suspended from a pivot above the magnet and dipped into the mercury. The
magnet exerted a tangential force on the wire, making it circle around the magnet for as long as
the current was maintained.

Electric circuit - An electric circuit is an interconnection of electric components such that electric
charge is made to flow along a closed path (a circuit), usually to perform some useful task. The
components in an electric circuit can take many forms, which can include elements such
as resistors, capacitors, switches, transformers and electronics. Electronic circuits contain active
components, usually semiconductors, and typically exhibit non-linear behavior, requiring complex
analysis. The simplest electric components are those that are termed passive and linear: while
they may temporarily store energy, they contain no sources of it, and exhibit linear responses to
stimuli.

Electronics - deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components such as vacuum
tubes, transistors, diodes, optoelectronics, sensors and integrated circuits, and associated passive
interconnection technologies. The nonlinear behavior of active components and their ability to
control electron flows makes amplification of weak signals possible and electronics is widely used
in information processing, telecommunications, and signal processing.
Electromagnetic wave - Faraday's and Ampère's work showed that a time-varying magnetic field
acted as a source of an electric field, and a time-varying electric field was a source of a magnetic
field. Thus, when either field is changing in time, then a field of the other is necessarily
induced. Such a phenomenon has the properties of a wave, and is naturally referred to as
an electromagnetic wave. Electromagnetic waves were analyzed theoretically by James Clerk
Maxwell in 1864. Maxwell developed a set of equations that could unambiguously describe the
interrelationship between electric field, magnetic field, electric charge, and electric current.
 Magnetism

Magnetism - is a class of physical phenomena that are mediated by magnetic fields. Electric
currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, which
acts on other currents and magnetic moments. The most familiar effects occur
in ferromagnetic materials, which are strongly attracted by magnetic fields and can
be magnetized to become permanent magnets, producing magnetic fields themselves. Only a few
substances are ferromagnetic; the most common ones are iron, cobalt and nickel and their alloys.
The prefix ferro- refers to iron, because permanent magnetism was first observed in lodestone, a
form of natural iron ore called magnetite, Fe3O4.
Types of Magnetism

Diamagnetism - appears in all materials and is the tendency of a material to oppose an applied
magnetic field, and therefore, to be repelled by a magnetic field. However, in a material with
paramagnetic properties (that is, with a tendency to enhance an external magnetic field), the
paramagnetic behavior dominates.[12] Thus, despite its universal occurrence, diamagnetic
behavior is observed only in a purely diamagnetic material. In a diamagnetic material, there are
no unpaired electrons, so the intrinsic electron magnetic moments cannot produce any bulk
effect.

Paramagnetic - In a paramagnetic material there are unpaired electrons; i.e., atomic or molecular
orbitals with exactly one electron in them. While paired electrons are required by the Pauli
exclusion principle to have their intrinsic ('spin') magnetic moments pointing in opposite
directions, causing their magnetic fields to cancel out, an unpaired electron is free to align its
magnetic moment in any direction. When an external magnetic field is applied, these magnetic
moments will tend to align themselves in the same direction as the applied field, thus reinforcing
it.

Ferromagnet - A ferromagnet, like a paramagnetic substance, has unpaired electrons. However, in

addition to the electrons' intrinsic magnetic moment's tendency to be parallel to an applied field,
there is also in these materials a tendency for these magnetic moments to orient parallel to each
other to maintain a lowered-energy state. Thus, even in the absence of an applied field, the
magnetic moments of the electrons in the material spontaneously line up parallel to one another.

Magnetic Domains - The magnetic moments of atoms in a ferromagnetic material cause them to
behave something like tiny permanent magnets. They stick together and align themselves into
small regions of more or less uniform alignment called magnetic domains or Weiss domains.
Magnetic domains can be observed with a magnetic force microscope to reveal magnetic domain
boundaries that resemble white lines in the sketch. There are many scientific experiments that
can physically show magnetic fields.

Antiferromagnet - In an antiferromagnet, unlike a ferromagnet, there is a tendency for the intrinsic

magnetic moments of neighboring valence electrons to point in opposite directions. When all
atoms are arranged in a substance so that each neighbor is anti-parallel, the substance
is antiferromagnetic. Antiferromagnets have a zero net magnetic moment, meaning that no field
is produced by them. Antiferromagnets are less common compared to the other types of
behaviors and are mostly observed at low temperatures. In varying temperatures,
antiferromagnets can be seen to exhibit diamagnetic and ferromagnetic properties.

Ferrimagnets - Like ferromagnetism, ferrimagnets retain their magnetization in the absence of a

field. However, like antiferromagnets, neighboring pairs of electron spins tend to point in opposite
directions. These two properties are not contradictory, because in the optimal geometrical
arrangement, there is more magnetic moment from the sublattice of electrons that point in one
direction, than from the sublattice that points in the opposite direction.

Super Para-Magnetism - When a ferromagnet or ferrimagnet is sufficiently small, it acts like a single
magnetic spin that is subject to Brownian motion. Its response to a magnetic field is qualitatively
similar to the response of a paramagnet, but much larger.