Electricity - Wires In The Home (1964)

Electricity is always there when you want it. It doesn't have. [Music] When this happens, we may have to light candles to see by and someone will have to find out what happened to the electricity. This is a sort of detective job, but it will be hard to discover the cause of the trouble if we don't know where electricity comes from and how it works for us. If you saw a house while it was being built, you would see there are wires going all through it. You would discover that wires are covered by a heavy wrapping or put through a conduit pipe to protect them. [Music] [Applause] They all lead to other wires that go to the utility pole. [Music] If we follow the wires on the poles to the next street and beyond that all the way across town, we'll come to a building called a generator station. What does this building contain? Well, the most important thing is this big machine called a generator. It makes electricity and is run steam made by boiling water in a huge boiler. The water is heated by burning gas, oil or by using atomic fuel. Electricity can be sent from here to houses all over town. People who live in some parts of the country get electricity from a different kind of generator station. Here the generator is run by the force of falling water. This force is enough to turn the generator which makes electricity. But either way, electricity travels through wires to where it will be used. When these wires are connected and the electricity turned on, the electricity will reach the house from the generator station and travel to every room. From this junction box where the wires come in, other wires branch out. There are always two wires like this. After the electricity has traveled through a wire from the generator station to light your lamp, it returns to the station through another wire to complete the circuit. But what is electricity? What does it look like? Electricity is hard to describe, but you can think of it as being made up of very tiny things called electrons. They flow easily through metal wire to operate electric lights and appliances. Wire made of copper, the same metal that pennies are made of, is one of the best conductors. Electricity will not flow through some materials such as plastic and rubber. If you touch a wire, like a lamp cord, the covering on the wire prevents the electricity from giving you a shock. These materials are called non-conductors. Wires are covered with this kind of material to prevent the wires from touching. If the wires touch, the electricity coming from the generator station will not reach the lamp but will go back to the generator station. This is called a short circuit for the electricity makes a shortcut in the circuit. So the light goes out when the house is completed and the wires are connected to the wire from the pole. Electricity is continually passing through all the wires in the house. But we don't want our lights on all the time. We don't want the washing machine or the electric dryer going every minute or the toaster continually toasting. We could keep pulling plugs out when we wanted to turn things off, but this would be a nuisance. Instead, while the house is being built, the electrician cuts the wires and puts in switches. A switch can be flipped back and forth. In one position, it completes the circuit so the electricity can pass. When it is flipped the other way, the circuit is broken and the flow of electrons is stopped. So the light goes out. Now let us see how electricity makes light. Inside a lamp bulb is a very small wire called a filament. It is made of a kind of metal called tungsten. Electricity has trouble getting through this type of small wire. And as it does, the wire becomes hot, glows, and we have light. Of course, it doesn't take this long. When we turn on the light, the filament gets hot, and we have light in an instant. In some electric heaters, the wires are not made to give off light, but they do give off heat. This kind of heat provides hot water. A toaster has hot wires also, and these wires toast the bread. Some other appliances are run by motors which in turn are run by electricity. A small motor runs the vacuum cleaner. A larger motor runs the washing machine. If too many appliances in the house are turned on or if something is wrong with one of them, there may be too much electricity flowing through the circuit and the wires would get hot. If the wires get too hot, they could start a fire. So, at the point where the wires from the pole come in, there is a fuse box or some circuit breakers. Circuit breakers are something like switches. If there is too much electricity going through, they snap the electric current off automatically. Sometimes if lights go out mysteriously, this may be the answer. Dad will have to check this by resetting the circuit breaker. The lights come on but go right off again. Perhaps there is something wrong with one of the appliances and it is causing a short circuit. Sure enough, the plug of the coffee percolator seems to be damaged and needs repair. As soon as we unplug it and reset the circuit breaker,