Why is electricity so hard to understand? 

By on

ElectricityIt's been a busy few months on different projects or busy couple of decades depending on how I look at it. I can say that on the odd (frequent) occasion when trying to explain something (i.e. electricity) I felt like banging my head against the wall. To be fair to everyone this does include talking to electrical engineers as well as non-electrical types. I have found out that I'm not the only one to wonder why it is difficult to understand electricity and as it turns out the answer may not simply be that everyone else is not quite with it.

The link below is for an article by someone called William Beaty where he has collected a lot of misconceptions and put them together to illustrate perhaps why it is a difficult concept to understand. In a strange way if you read it (and beware before you start it is a long winded page), it does spread some light on why there is of confusion.

Why is electricity so hard to understand?

If in fact it does the opposite and confuses you even more than that may not necessarily be a bad thing. At least you know will know you need more guidance and hopefully see that visiting myElectrical.com more often is a good thing.



Steven McFadyen's avatar Steven McFadyen

Steven has over twenty five years experience working on some of the largest construction projects. He has a deep technical understanding of electrical engineering and is keen to share this knowledge. About the author

myElectrical Engineering

comments powered by Disqus



Random Numbers

Using laser optical pulses the random number generator utilizes the time between arrival of random photos to generate the numbers, ensuring true accuracy...

Why use catalogues

I'm a fan of using manufacturers catalogues. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, if your involved in the purchase of equipment, you will likely...

Tech Topics/Application Notes - Siemens

There are a lot of interesting two page type notes on various medium voltage topics – switchgear, circuit breakers, bus systems etc. It is on the Siemens...

Electric Motors

Collection of links to various places with useful motor information. I’ll try and return to the page every now and again to update it with any motor notes...

EU Code of Conduct on Data Centres - Best Practices

The European Union is implementing a voluntary code of practice for participants with the aim of improving the overall efficiency of data centres. As part...

UPS Battery Sizing

Various techniques exist to enable the correct selection of batteries for UPS applications.  The procedure described below is one of the more common. ...

Always Use PPE

A lot of our members work in countries where PPE (personal protective equipment) is regulated or they work for companies/organizations which take employee...

Fire Resistant and Fire Retardant Cables

Fire resistant and fire retardant cable sheaths are design to resist combustion and limit the propagation of flames. Low smokes cables have a sheath designed...

International System of Units (SI System)

The International System of Units (abbreviated SI) is the world's most widely used system of units.  The system consists of a set of units and prefixes...

Multimeter

Multimeters are undoubtedly the most common item of electrical test equipment in use.  Often it is the first piece of equipment people will turn to when...

Have some knowledge to share

If you have some expert knowledge or experience, why not consider sharing this with our community.  

By writing an electrical note, you will be educating our users and at the same time promoting your expertise within the engineering community.

To get started and understand our policy, you can read our How to Write an Electrical Note