ABSTRACT

Simply put, a power plant consists of a turbine in which stages of blades are attached to one end of a shaft to cause the shaft to rotate as the result of either steam, water or heat passing through them. The other end of the shaft turns in the middle of a gigantic magnet (known as the stator). Any time metal (the rotator in this case) passes through a magnetic loop (of the stator), an electric current (measured in amperes) will be created as electrons from the magnet are “excited” and bounce into one another. The generator is attached to a “step up” transformer that increases the voltage of the electricity created so that it can travel long distances without unnecessarily losing too much energy. At the location where the electricity is needed, other transformers will then lower the voltage again. The electrons themselves do not actually travel long distances through the wires but simply “bump” into their neighboring electrons and this, in effect, sets off a chain reaction. This “direct current” can travel long distances effectively without losing energy in the power transmission wire (so-called “line losses”). Alternating current (AC), on which most household devices operate, is created by placing metal “wings” on the generator shaft that rotate in and out of the magnet and these “wings” have the effect of allowing the electrons that are excited to migrate back toward their initial position when the “wing” leaves the magnet before the electrons are “excited” again by the next “wing” that swings through the magnet. (Some older buildings [such as Columbia University’s Pupin Hall physics building] are still wired for direct current.) By the 1880s, electricity from power plants was illuminating theaters from Santiago to Milan. By 1956, the world’s first nuclear power plant in Seascale, England, had entered commercial service.