Electricity is all around us and most of us use it every day.

Electricity operates our

lights, runs our refrigerators, kitchen appliances, and powers motors. But do you
really know what electricity is? To really understand electricity dear grade 7 students,
you have to learn first what “atom” is. Everything in the universe is made up of atoms.
Let’s imagine the image of an “ant”. We think of ants as being pretty small. But atoms
are smaller. Much, much smaller. Atoms are so small, in fact, that one ant is made up
of too many atoms to count. More than a billion! If you take an object and keep
breaking it down to smaller units, eventually, you’ll be left with only atoms which we
can call the building blocks of everything. Atoms have a couple of different parts
including the proton, neutron, and electron. “Electron” is a part of an atom that is so
important. Remember class, that not all atoms have the same number of electrons.
The number of electrons in an atom can change, because electrons can move between
atoms. Electricity is the movement or flow of electrons from one atom to another. This
flow of electrons is called electric current. Electrons can move in all materials. But
they can move through some materials better than others. If electrons can move
quickly and easily in a material, then that material is a “conductor”. A conductor is
anything that allows electric current to flow from one point to another. The opposite of
a conductor is an “insulator”. An insulator is a material that does not let electrons
move well and doesn’t conduct electricity. Let’s look around our surroundings, have
you seen a wire? Have you ever seen the inside of that wire? The inside of the wire is
usually made up of copper or another conductive metal while the outside is made of
plastics, an insulator. The copper wire helps the electrons flow, while the plastic
insulator help keeps the electricity from being wasted and prevent us from being
shocked.

Using a simple model for atoms, we can see in your module that electrons are orbiting
a nucleus. This nucleus is the core the contains protons and neutrons. Protons carry
a positive charge (+), and electrons carry a negative charge (-). Different combinations
of the two kinds of charges can produce either attractive or repulsive forces.
Objects is said to be electrically neutral when there is an equal charge. In other words,
it means that there is no charge that is interacting with other objects. If an object has
more positive charges than negative charges, its electrical charge is positive. If an
object has more negative charges than positive, its electrical charge is negative. If an
object has the same number of positive and negative charges, it has no electrical
charge or it means to say it is neutral. My dear grade 7 students, it is also important
to note that charging can be done by conduction which requires contact between
neutral body and the charged object. If this does not require contact but does require
the presence of a ground then it is charging by induction. And lastly, if there is a
transfer of electrons from one uncharged object to another by rubbing, then it is
charging by friction.
One of the things that you need to learn and apply in your daily lives is by learning the
importance of Earthing or what we call “Grounding”. The process of earthing or
grounding is commonly used in various appliances that we can see around our house
like refrigerator, cooker, heater, toaster, and washing machine. These appliances must
be earthed for safety. Earthed appliances will let the current flow to the earth through
the earth wire instead of flowing through the person’s body.