We’ve all grown up with the luxury of electricity available at the flick of a switch. Young minds are often fascinated by this seemingly magical power source that brings their tablets, cell phones, televisions, and game systems to life.
But how can we answer their questions in a straightforward, easy-to-understand, and exciting way?
This guide on electricity explained for kids will help your young ones understand electrical power. They’ll appreciate how electrical energy surrounds them and shapes their day-to-day world.
The best advice is to ensure you fully understand electricity before teaching children. Once sparked, their curious minds will be full of wonder and questions to keep learning.
Electricity Explained for Kids: Get the Right Level
Whether you’re a parent or teacher (or even a kid yourself!), it’s important to take the student’s age into account. It’s easy for children to become frustrated or uninterested in science if it seems overly complicated.
We recommend keeping it short and sweet for preschoolers. Incorporate practical electricity experiments to wow them and capture their attention. Older children can handle more complex information and theory.
Explaining electricity to kids also provides an opportunity to remind them to be safe around electrical power. Reinforce the dangers of power lines and exposed wires and mixing electricity and water.
Our electricity explanations below are for young children, but feel free to use our more detailed overview of how electricity works for older kids.
Electricity Explained for Kids: Simple Experiments
Younger kids especially love simple electricity experiments to pop the curiosity cap from their heads. Here are some easy and eye-opening experiments to get started.
They all use household items. We’ll explain the science later. Remember that the person creating the charge has to conduct the experiment.
Bend Water with Static Electricity
For this easy experiment, you’ll need the following:
- Plastic comb or an inflated balloon
- A faucet that can run water slowly but consistently
Let the tap run. Rub the comb or balloon on your or your child’s hair; this charges the object with static electricity. Hold it close to the water without touching it and watch the faucet’s trickle bend.
Separate Salt and Pepper with a Comb
This electricity experiment also shows static electricity. For this, you’ll need:
- Plastic comb
- Salt and pepper
- Bowl
- Spoon
Mix some salt and pepper in the bowl with the spoon. Your budding scientist needs to charge the plastic comb by rubbing and running it through their hair. Then they can hover the comb over the salt and pepper bowl. Watch the pepper flakes fly up to the comb. An inflated balloon charged on someone’s hair will perform the same trick.
Play Dough Electrical Circuit
Lighting a small LED bulb demonstrates the second type of electricity, current electricity, and makes a basic battery.
You may need to help younger children with the setup. Your experiment list includes a few inexpensive items you may need to buy:
- Store-bought play dough (or make your own)
- A small LED (preferably less than two volts). These are often known as 5 mm LED lamps
- Battery pack — a Uxcell battery box holder with an on/off switch, designed to house 2 x 1.5 volt AA batteries is ideal
- Two 1.5-volt AA batteries for the battery pack
Pop the batteries into the battery pack. With the on/off switch, your pack can now create circuits via the play dough. Remember that electricity only passes one way through an LED.
For example, roll out two separate play dough sausages. Put a wire from the battery pack into the base of a separate play dough sausage. Complete the circuit by putting a wire from the LED light into the top end of each play dough sausage.
You can get creative, making chain circuits with multiple pieces of play dough and LEDs.
How Can I Show Kids an Electrical Circuit?
Alternatively, take a battery (with appropriate voltage), a light bulb, two wires, and some electrical tape.
Strip and expose about ½ inch of wire at both ends of each wire. Tape one wire end to the bulb base’s silver side and the other end of that wire to the battery’s (-) negative pole.
Next, tape the exposed end of the second wire to the battery’s (+) positive pole. Tap this second wire’s exposed end to the bottom of the light bulb and watch it illuminate. You have just demonstrated an electrical circuit.
What Is Electricity? Explained for Kids
Electricity is a form of energy. Electricity can build up in a place or run around (flow) from one place to another.
There are two types of electricity:
- Static electricity is the electricity that builds up in one place. Static means something that doesn’t move. This is what happened when we charged our balloons and combs; rubbing them created an electric charge in one place.
- Current electricity is electricity that moves between places. We saw this with our play dough and LED experiment; an electric current was moving through.
Examples of static electricity include:
- Lightning
- Getting an electric shock from a doorknob
- Rubbing an inflated balloon on your head and sticking it to a wall
Current electricity, also called electric current, runs through many appliances. Turn the light on and off. That’s current electricity running through the wires and light bulb. The same happens when you watch television, play video games, or charge or use a cell phone.
What Is Electricity, in Simple Words?
Electricity is the flow of electrical power.
How Does Electricity Work?
Humans have studied electricity for a long time. The ancient Greeks learned about static electricity. Benjamin Franklin discovered electric charges, naming them positive charges and negative charges.
Scientists understand how to generate and use electricity in many ways. Let’s look at how electricity works by understanding atoms.
Atoms are tiny particles that are the building blocks of life. Everything in the universe is made up of atoms, usually many billions of atoms. It’s good to think about the idea of balance when thinking about electricity.
Every atom has a center, which we call a nucleus. The nucleus has positive charges (+) called protons and neutrons that have no charge. Circling this nucleus are electrons with a negative charge (-). The + and – signs are familiar to anyone who has looked at a battery.
The protons’ positive charge is attracted to the electrons’ negative charge. But an atom is “at peace” and balanced if it has the same number of protons and electrons.
We have learned to move electrons from circling the atom’s nucleus and “push” it into a neighboring atom. That movement creates a flow of electrons. When electrons flow between atoms, this is an electric current.
It takes a large number of electrons flowing in this way to generate an electric current we can use.
Test question: Guess how many volts are in the average lightning bolt?
(Answer: 300 million volts and about 30,000 amps. U.S. household current is 120 volts and 15 amps.)
How Do We Make Electricity?
Electricity exists in our natural environment. We now know how electricity works, so let’s look at how it’s made.
We’ve learned how to generate electricity at power plants and have renewable energy sources like hydropower and wind power. They all use the same method to create electricity and use movement to get electrons flowing and generate electrical energy.
First, we need copper wire. Copper wire can conduct electricity well; that means electrons can travel easily through it. This copper wire is made into a coil, and large magnets are placed within the coil.
A machine called a turbine rapidly rotates those copper wires and magnets. The electrons start moving through the copper wire, hopping from atom to atom. An electrical current flows through the copper wire towards the pylons we see in the countryside. So, to make electricity, we require:
Magnets + copper wire + spinning motion = electric current
The electrons don’t move down the wire, though. They bang into each other and pass electricity to each other, like a giant game of pass-the-parcel.
Test question: Is wood a good conductor of electricity?
(Answer: No)
Explaining Electromagnetism to Older Children
The changing magnetic field within a spinning turbine creates an electric field.
An electric field is what physicists define as a physical field surrounding electrically charged particles. This field exerts a force on the field’s charged particles, repelling or attracting them.
This electric field continually changes as the turbine spins. A changing electric field then creates a magnetic field. That’s why we call this electromagnetism or talk about electromagnetic forces; they are essentially two aspects of the same effect.
Experiment: Place a magnetic compass next to a wire in a circuit. The compass needle will move when an electric current passes through the wire.
Where Do We Create Electricity?
We need colossal power plants to make enough electricity to power our towns and cities. Fossil fuel power plants burn natural gas, coal, or oil to produce steam. This steam turns the turbines that create electricity. Nuclear power plants also make steam to replicate this process.
A wind turbine’s turning blades turn an internal copper wire and magnet turbine. The faster the wind turbine spins, the more electricity it produces. That’s why windy days are great for wind power.
Another form of electricity production is solar power. Solar panels don’t have turbines inside. They convert sunlight into electricity.
Test question: How much U.S. electricity is generated by wind power?
(Answer: Around 10% in 2022)
How Do We Get Electricity into Our Homes?
Electricity travels to our homes and businesses through transmission wires attached to pylons.
These pylons form a huge power grid. This network allows us to send electricity long distances, from remote power plants to wherever it is needed.
Practical test: The electricity flows to local substations. See if you and your kids can find your neighborhood’s substation. Here, transformers reduce the power of the electricity so that it’s safe to use in our homes.
Electricity enters properties via cables attached to wire poles and into a meter box. From here, it goes through a wire to your home’s breaker box. Your home will have a series of wires — forming circuits — around your home.
When you plug an appliance into that circuit, electricity flows through the device, giving it power.
Test question: Who maintains the majority of Texas’ electricity power grid?
(Answer: ERCOT)
Electrical Safety at Home
No electricity guide for kids would be complete without teaching and showing the little ones the benefits and dangers of electricity in the home. We advise setting ground rules about electricity so they understand its dangers.
No electricity guide for kids would be complete without teaching and showing the little ones the benefits and dangers of electricity in the home. We advise setting ground rules about electricity, so they understand the dangers.
Is Electricity Safe?
Yes, electricity is safe if handled correctly. Fooling around with electricity at home can result in fires, serious injuries, and even death. Make sure your children understand that:
- Never use electricity as a plaything
- Don’t insert anything other than proper plugs into power outlets
- Unplug devices using the plug and never pull on the cord
- Always follow electrical equipment instructions
- Water and electricity don’t mix: never put electronic items in water — that includes the bath, shower, and even small puddles of water on the floor
- Don’t put things on top of any device’s electrical cord or damage it as this can start fires
- If in doubt about anything electrical, ask a parent, teacher, or responsible adult for help
Understanding Electricity Vocabulary at Home
Ask your children to gather a few household electronic items to teach them about how we measure electricity. Include a kettle among the objects.
First, show them the plastic wires that encase appliance wires. We use plastic as an insulator to protect ourselves from the electric currents in wires. Plastic is an excellent insulator because it is a terrible conductor of electricity.
Next, check the appliance’s plug or label for the following information. Get the kids to imagine the home’s electrical circuit as a circuit of water pipes. Then compare the following measurements:
Amps, or amperes, show the number of electrons flowing through a circuit. Using our pipe analogy, an amp is, therefore, the amount of water flowing through our pipes.
A volt (V) measures the force pushing electrons through an electric circuit. Thinking about our water pipes, the higher the water pressure, the higher the voltage.
An ohm (Ω) is a measurement of electrical resistance. A low ohm reading means electrons flow easily through the circuit. We use copper wire for electrical goods because it’s a good conductor with minimal electrical resistance.
A watt (W) relates to power, and it’s common to see watt values on light bulbs. A light bulb with a higher wattage needs more electrical energy to illuminate.
Comparing Household Appliance Electricity Usage
Test: Compare the watts, amps, and volts on the gathered electronic items.
For example, a typical washing machine will use between 5-15 amps and need 400-1,400 watts of power. A cell phone charger may need between 0.08-2 amps and 10 watts to function.
We can see that a washing machine needs more amps and watts to work. It takes a lot of power (watts) to start and then needs a large electricity flow (amps) to keep it going. The phone charger requires much less.
Learning About Electricity Can Be Fun
Electricity is the flow of electrical power. It can build up as static electricity or move as electrical current.
We generate electricity by making electrons move. This happens on an industrial scale at power plants or in wind turbines. Turbines spin copper wires with magnets inside them to kickstart a flow of electrons. The electrical current created travels long distances through wires to our homes via substations.
Our domestic appliances tap into electrical circuits and draw power to work. Get children to try the experiments above so they can visualize electricity. Simply drawing their interest in the world around them may spark an interest in science.
So, there you have it. That’s electricity explained for kids. If they’re intrigued, let them explore the history of electricity, featuring historical giants like Benjamin Franklin and Nikolas Tesla.
Brought to you by amigoenergy
All images licensed from Adobe Stock.
Featured image: