We will work our way up,
starting with the smallest components,
to assemble ever bigger ones on higher levels.
So let's start with the electrons.
You can imagine them as ultra-tiny balls
that always travel at extremely high speeds
and never ever run out of energy and get tired
— because they "are" energy, they "are" speed.
They rarely travel in a straight line,
because they are attracted by protons
(which like electrons are everywhere)
like by a very strong magnet, and so they
usually speed in orbits around lumps of protons,
the atom cores of each chemical element.
But they're not married or glued to the protons,
they may get attracted by another atom core
or pushed away by other electrons.
This happens constantly and is the basis of
all chemical reactions, all biology, all life,
all nerves, all thought — and all electricity.
Various physical and chemical processes
can lead to many electrons being stripped
from their atoms, leading to an imbalance.
This imbalance is called voltage.
The greater the imbalance of
too many electrons in one place
and too few in another,
the greater the voltage between both locations.
As much as electrons are attracted to protons,
as much are they repulsed by each other.
A cloud of electrons therefore
has the tendency to expand.
This tendency to expand creates a pressure,
the voltage, that leads to a current,
a stream of electrons travelling away
from the center of the electron cloud.
How well the electrons can travel is very
different from matter to matter, some are
rather a barrier and have a high resistance,
others are like an open road and
then called good conductors.
As the electrons travel through matter,
they bump into its atoms, which
results in heat (atom movements).
Despite losses such as heat, electromagnetic
radiation waves and other forms,
the electric current can carry enough energy
to be harnessed by man via technology.
It can propel motors (such as the DVD drive),
feed lights (such as each of the pixels
of your TFT monitor), swing magnets
(such as the speakers playing music) and so on.
And it can be used to intricately control
the flow of electrons themselves through
a highly complex network of conductors,
as in the microchip circuitry of your computer.
The power used to generate electricity
(and to build electric and electronic devices)
is always much higher than the power
that we can use from it in the end,
but all in all, this technology is so far
the most versatile and efficient
we have developed to channel energy.
Learning Programming with Eas — the Tutorial by Molaskes
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