Marilyn Russo, age 10, of Staten Island, NY,

What puts the current into electric wires?

Amber is a glassy stone, tinted like frozen honey. If you rub it with a silky cloth, feathers and bits of lint will. fly towards it and stick to its shiny surface. The ancient Greeks knew how to do this trick, but they did not know they were flirting with the mighty giant we call electricity. They called the glassy stone elektron and when we finally tamed the mighty giant, we borrowed their word for amber to name it. We have tamed it and trained it to do a million jobs, but we still do not know all there is to know about it.

The first electric current was made with a battery. The little gadget was a pile of metal saucers separated by wads of rag or leather which had been soaked in chemicals. The electric current ran through a loop of copper wire which had both ends fixed to the pile of chemicals. In this battery, the chemicals put the current into the circuit of copper wire. Later a better way was found to do this by using the invisible power of a magnet.

Our electric current comes to us from a generator, often far away. The generator swings great copper coils through the magnetic field of a giant magnet. This magnetic field is like the magnetic field around a small magnet, only bigger and more powerful. You cannot see it but you can see how it works by placing, a small magnet under a sheet of glass with fragments of steel sprinkled on top. The bits of steel will be forced to line up in rows fanning out and looping around from the two ends of the magnet. They show the magnetic field, the invisible force which surrounds the magnet.

In a generator, huge copper coils cut through the lines of force in a magnetic field time and again.

We do not know how or why this puts the electric current into the wire circuit running to and from the generator. But we do know that the current comes from the energy of tiny electrons in the copper atoms. The voltage, or pressure from the generator, forces countless numbers of these electrons to move together in the same direction.

The current in the wires may be DC or AC ‑ direct current or alternating current, In direct current, the teeming electrons movetogether in the same direction. In alternating current, they move one step forward and one step back. In alternating current of 60 cycles, the electrons jog back and forth 60 times a second. AC 120 cycles means that the electrons Jog back and forth 120 times a second. And all this energetic hopping is started by the humming generator.

There, copper coils are whirling through the force lines of magnetic field. For some mysterious reason this generates electrical pressure which makes the electrons hop through the circuit of copper wire. It is their energy which provides the current we use to light our home sand cities, cook or toast and perform a million other daily chores.