This unit teaches students the foundations of electrical circuits and introduces them to their simplest components. Covers series and parallel circuits, Kirchhoff's Rules, Ohm's Law, RC circuits, resistivity, and capacitance.

Science Buddies profiles careers you perhaps never even considered. Do you know what a power distributor and dispatcher does? Someone has to control the flow of electricity along the transmission lines to be sure nothing takes the power...

This article helps students understand the concepts of electricity and circuits.

Hans Christian Orsted's accidental discovery that an electrical current moves a compass needle rocks the scientific world; a spate of experiments follows, immediately leading to the first electromagnet and electric motor.

Aided by tools such as static electricity machines and Leyden jars, scientists continue their experiments into the fundamentals of magnetism and electricity.

Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison duke it out over the best way to transmit electricity and Heinrich Hertz is the first person (unbeknownst to him) to broadcast and receive radio waves.

The first telegraphs are constructed and Michael Faraday produces much of his brilliant and enduring research into electricity and magnetism, inventing the first primitive transformer and generator.

The Scientific Revolution takes hold, facilitating the groundbreaking work of luminaries such as William Gilbert, who took the first truly scientific approach to the study of magnetism and electricity and wrote extensively of his findings.

Albert Einstein publishes his special theory of relativity and his theory on the quantum nature of light, which he identified as both a particle and a wave. With ever new appliances, electricity begins to transform everyday life.

Review the components of a circuit and their symbols such as battery, resistor, and switch. Analyze how the power of a resistor is related to the current and electric potential difference across the resistor.

With his famous kite experiment and other forays into science, Benjamin Franklin advances knowledge of electricity, inspiring his English friend Joseph Priestley to do the same.

Described is a simple low cost home-made device that converts the radio wave energy from a mobile phone signal into electricity to light an LED. No battery or complex circuitry is required. The device can form the basis of a range of...

The Industrial Revolution is in full force, Gramme invents his dynamo and James Clerk Maxwell formulates his series of equations on electrodynamics.

New tools such as special microscopes and the cyclotron take research to higher levels, while average citizens enjoy novel amenities such as the FM radio.

Scientists discover and probe x-rays and radioactivity, while inventors compete to build the first radio.

This article from Khan Academy provides information about capacitors. This information is intended for the Class 12 Physics Course (India).

At the turn of the 19th century, scientists were beginning to gain a rudimentary understanding of electricity and magnetism, but they knew almost nothing about the relationship between the two. Baltic German physicist Heinrich Lenz took...

Gerd Binnig co-developed the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) with Heinrich Rohrer. The STM allowed scientists entry into the atomic world in a new way and was a major advance in the field of nanotechnology. For their achievement,...

Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist who first observed the phenomenon of superconductivity while carrying out pioneering work in the field of cryogenics. An important step on the way to this discovery was his success in...

For a man whose career involved the entire known universe, John Kraus had a remarkably insular upbringing. He was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in physics, all at the...

James Clerk Maxwell was one of the most influential scientists of the nineteenth century. His theoretical work on electromagnetism and light largely determined the direction that physics would take in the early twentieth century. Indeed,...

Although he didn't start studying physics until he retired from the clock-making business at age 30, French native Jean Peltier made immense contributions to science that still reverberate today. Even with the primitive tools available...

Theodore Maiman built the world's first operable laser. Ironically, Maiman's first paper announcing this momentous achievement, which many other scientists had been racing to complete themselves, was rejected. Since then, however, lasers...