Electricity Conservation Challenge

In today’s new and upcoming age, technology has become a necessity of everyday life resulting in electric demands that have increased a great deal. Because of this, the real problem and solution is to conserve and not waste the energy that is available to us. Decreasing the price on our energy bill is a plus to the hard work that is put into this process. Ways to reduce our electricity consumption is simply:
1)Turn off the lights that are not in use; which is don’t most times in our house
2)Find out if we can turn off the heater during the day because our whole family isn’t at home
3)Turn off the sprinkler on rainy weeks

Conserving energy maybe a lot to think about but it is also very rewarding in the end.

It's Electrifying

This week we expanded on our electricity unit. We learned to calculate the current that travels through a circuit and how R (resistance), I (current), V (voltage) and P (power) contribute to electricity. So far we learned about two different types of circuits; parallel and series. A series circuit contains an electric source that travels in one path. A parallel circuit again contains an electric source (ex. battery) and resistors traveling in multiple paths. An example of this is the way our houses are wired. We learned that in a parallel circuit, if one resistor fails to allow electricity to flow, the other resistors wouldn’t be affected by the spoiled one. Unlike a series circuit this is very ideal. 

PE=V•q

Adding on to Unit 11, we learned how charge, voltage and potential energy relates to one another and learned how to use equations to solve them. In the equation PE=V·q, the voltage multiplied by the charge is used to find the potential energy. In this relation E.P.E is only dangerous if there is a lot of charge that builds up over a long period of time. When time increases the number of charge decreases making the outcome more dangerous when multiplied by the voltage to gather a stronger and much more dangerous PE. 

Electric Potential Energy vs. Electric Potential

This week’s class was about determining the difference between Electric Potential Energy and Electric Potential difference. Electric Potential Energy also referred to as PEq or stored energy of a charged object in an electric potential field. This energy has units of joules. Electric potential, also known as electric potential difference or voltage contains units of volts or joules/coulomb. It is important not to get these mistaken as the same thing because they’re not. Electric potential does not equal electric potential energy. Although, Joules/Coulomb (electric potential difference) = Joules/Charge (electric potential energy/charge).