Abstract
The first thing to tackle in the road to understanding electronics is to wrap our minds around what electricity is and how it works. The way that electricity works is very peculiar and unintuitive. We are used to dealing with the world in terms of physical objects—desks, chairs, baseballs, and so on. Even if we never took a class in physics, we know the basic properties of such objects from everyday experience. If I drop a rock on my foot, it will hurt. If I drop a heavier rock, it will hurt more. If I remove an important wall from a house, it will fall down.
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Notes
- 1.
This is technically the atomic mass of the element, given in special units called atomic mass units (AMUs). However, the weights of protons and neutrons are each extremely close to 1 AMU, and the weight of electrons is extremely close to zero, so the atomic mass and the combined number of protons and neutrons are nearly identical.
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© 2020 Jonathan Bartlett
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Bartlett, J. (2020). What Is Electricity?. In: Electronics for Beginners. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5979-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5979-5_3
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Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4842-5978-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4842-5979-5
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