Morris Goldsmith age 10, of Tulsa Oklahoma, for his question:
What exactly is voltage?
Electricity is a cosmic giant a mighty force that belongs to the universe. It darts through the filmy plasma that occupies the spaces between the planets. It flashes from our local thunderheads. The silent, invisible force that gives electricity its power is called voltage.
The mighty power of electricity operates on a miniature scale down in the world of atoms and atomic particles. It is no more than moving electrons, those tiny particles that orbit the nucleus of the atom. The atom, of course, is a unit of assorted particles some charged with positive electricity, some with negative electricity and some electrically neutral. Electrons are fast moving negative particles. All of them are exactly alike, but some tend to speed out of their orbits. These runaways may skip to a new home and join the family of electrons orbiting another atom. Or they may zoom off alone as negative ions. At any rate, these energetic runaways move at terrific speeds.
With nothing to guide them, the straying electrons tend to zoom off in all directions. But a silent, invisible force can make them act together like well drilled soldiers on parade. This force is voltage. It is the strict general that forces zillions of these charged particles to move in the same direction. It can also make them jog back and forth together many times a second. The mighty power of electricity is no more than moving electrons and voltage is the force that makes them move.
Voltage is the force that pushes electric current .through a wire circuit. We can make it with chemicals or with magnets. A battery creates voltage from its special chemical activity. A generator needs the invisible force field that surrounds a mighty magnet. Voltage is created when copper coils cut through these lines of magnetic force again and again. The spinning generator is linked to a wiring system and the voltage forces a current of moving electrons through the circuit.
Some substances carry or conduct electric current better than others. One of the best conductors is copper and we use this metal to make our electrical wiring systems. The normal copper atom is orbited by 29 electrons. Like all electrons, they tend to orbit their nucleus in orderly shells. The inside shell is occupied by two electrons, the second shell holds eight and the third is complete with 18. The 29th electron must orbit alone in a fourth shell and such lone ranger electrons tend to stray. Zillions of them hop about through a copper wire. When a wire circuit is linked to a generator, the voltage forces them to step along together.
Voltage is measured in volt units. The amount of electric current is measured in amperes. Wiring systems tend to resist the voltage push and some of its force is lost on the way from the generator. This electrical resistance is measured in ohm units. One volt is the force needed to push one ampere against one ohm of resistance. A reading lamp needs about half an ampere of current. Every second the~light ,burns+ the vodfiage shoves about three billion billion electrons in the thin wire inside the bulb. Every second, these little soldiers jog forward and backward together 60 times.