Electricity At Rest

The ancient Greeks had a word for it. Records show that as early as 600 BC the attractive properties of amber were known. Thales of Miletus (640-546 BC), one of the "seven wise men" of ancient Greece, is credited with having observed the attraction of amber for small fibrous materials and bits of straw. Amber was used by these people, even as it is now, for ornamental purposes. Just as the precious metals had their names of gold and silver, so amber had its name: "electron." It was later shown that the same effect can be obtained by rubbing a rod of glass or hard rubber with a handkerchief. Many other nonmetallic materials are found to have this property, which is known as "static electricity." All electrified materials behave either as glass or rubber. Glass has a "positive" charge and hard rubber has a "negative" charge. If you electrify two strips of hard rubber by rubbing them with fur, they will repel each other. Two glass rods will behave the same way. But, if you electrify a rod of rubber and suspend it near an electrified rod of glass, they will attract each other. One of the most important laws of electricity is "Bodies with similar charges repel each other; bodies with opposite charges attract each other." A positive charge is designated with a (+); a negative charge by the sign (-). Although people have controlled electricity for many years, no one can explain exactly what it is. Many different theories have been given as to the nature of electricity through the years, but the modern one is the "Electron theory." In short, the electron theory proposes that all matter consists of tiny particles called molecules. These molecules are made up of two or more smaller particles called atoms. The atoms are then divided into smaller particles called protons, neutrons, and electrons. These particles are all the same in matter, whether in gas, liquid, or solid. The different properties or characteristics of the matter take form according to the arrangement and numbers of these particles which make up the atom. The proton has a natural positive charge of electricity; the electron has a negative charge; and the neutron has no charge at all, but just adds weight to the matter. Protons and neutrons form the central core of the atoms about which the electrons rotate. The electrons carry small negative charges of electricity, which neutralize the positive charges of the protons. The simplest atom of all is the hydrogen atom. It consists of one positive proton and one negative electron. Other atoms, such as those forming copper, iron, or silicon, are much more complicated. Copper, for example, has 29 electrons circling about its nucleus in four different orbits. While protons are much smaller than electrons in size, they contain the bulk of the mass of every atom. One proton, for example, weighs nearly two thousand times as much as an electron. The electrons therefore are light particles or objects around a small but relatively heavy nucleus. It is difficult to conceive the size of the atom. Research by physicists has established that the mass on one electron is about .000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,911 of a gram. If you assume that one proton in a hydrogen atom is the size of a baseball in Kansas City, then the electron would have an orbit which would reach from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. Along with the extremely small size of electrons and protons, they are separated by relatively vast distances.