Semestre 2

Introduction

Understanding electricity and its role in our society is a good first step towards examining our environmental impact and finding ways to reduce our footprint. To do this, we first need to review our relationship with electricity and its sources.

Electricity is a natural phenomenon that can be used to power electronic equipment and appliances. Everything on the planet is made of atoms, and all atoms have electrons. Basically, electricity is the flow of electrons from one atom to another. We call this flow the "current" (or "electric current"). Atoms that easily exchange electrons are called conductors. These conductors can be combined to enable us to control the flow of electricity to serve our needs. 

Sources of electricity fall into two categories: renewable (such as solar energy) and non-renewable (oil).

The world's three main sources of electricity - coal, gas and oil - are non-renewable. Other widespread sources of electricity are nuclear, hydroelectric, wind and solar power. 

In this course, we'll answer some of the most frequently asked questions about electricity and define some commonly used terms.

We also explain the different laws (Ohm's law, Kirchoff's law and Gauss's law) used to calculate the various quantities.