Electricity and electronics
Electricity
- Batteries: How does a battery store electricity for years at a time?
- Battery chargers: How does a battery charger work? How long do batteries need charging for?
- Electricity: What is electricity and how can we put it to use?
- Electrical energy monitors: Which of your appliances cost most money to run?
- Electric doorbells: What makes the ding-dong noise when someone rings your bell?
- Electric motors: How can we turn electricity and magnetism into useful power?
- Electrolyzers: How can we make fuel by passing electricity through chemicals?
- Filament lamps: Why do filament lamps get hot and waste so much energy?
- Fuses: What stops your house burning down if there's a sudden surge of electric power?
- Generators: How can you make electricity from spinning motion?
- Heating elements: How can you turn an electric current into hot water?
- History of electricity: How did electric power become such an indispensable technology?
- Hub motors: How can you build an electric motor inside a bicycle or car wheel?
- Induction chargers: Why can electric toothbrushes charge up on plastic stands?
- Induction motors: Why are AC motors often better than DC ones?
- Inverters: How can you change one form of electric current into another?
- Lithium-ion batteries: Why do modern rechargeable batteries last so much longer?
- Moving-coil meters: Measure the voltage or current in a circuit.
- Neon lamps: What makes cities buzz with night-time life?
- OLEDs (organic LEDs) and LEPs (light-emitting polymers): What's the secret technology behind super-flat TVs?
- Piezoelectricity: How can you make electricity by squeezing a lump of quartz?
- RCD circuit breakers: What can save your life if you chop through a power cable?
- Reed switches: How does an intruder alarm detect an opening door or a broken window?
- Relays: How can a tiny current switch on a much bigger current in something like a telephone exchange?
- Static electricity: Why does rubbing something give it an electric charge?
- Stepper motors: How can you make an electric motor precise enough to control a robot?
- Strobe lights: What makes a strobe light flicker so fast?
- Supercapacitors: How can we make capacitors store as much energy as batteries?
- Surge protectors: How can you protect your computer from lightning strikes?
- Transformers: How can you convert a big voltage into a small one (or vice-versa)?
- Voltage optimisation: How can you save energy in a factory by using cleaner, smaller, voltages?
- Xenon lamps: What makes a camera flash so fast and bright?
Electronics
- Amplifiers: How can you make an electric signal bigger or more audible?
- Capacitors: How can you store electricity with sheets of metal separated by thin air?
- Diodes and LEDs: What makes an LED light up?
- Electronics: How can something as small as an electron control your television, radio, or computer?
- Integrated circuits: How do you pack millions of tiny electronic components onto tiny silicon chips?
- Logic gates: How do these simple decision-making circuits power calculators and computers?
- Nixie tubes: How did old-fashioned counter displays work?
- Oscilloscopes: Draw a trace of electrical signals.
- Photoelectric cells: How can a tiny electronic component detect a flash of light?
- Resistors: What are electronic resistors and how do they work?
- Thyristors: What are they—and how do they compare to ordinary diodes and transistors?
- Transistors: How did a tiny electronic component change the world?
- Vacuum fluorescent displays: How does the green display on a cooker or microwave work?