January 9, 2006

Greetings from Old Sparky,

I like to think I am as smart as the next guy.  It's not true, but I like to think it anyway.

Armed with this confidence, I will occasionally muster up a few IQ points and try to teach my children something of value.  I don't mean help them with their homework, or explain what a price/earnings ratio is.  I like to teach them something they can really use in life, limited only by my ability to fabricate information.

Yesterday I gave my sons a tutorial about the utilities in the house.  I think I was originally headed toward a discussion about how much it costs to heat the house with doors open, and the corresponding expense to illuminate rooms that are empty, but somehow we got distracted by shiny things.

I showed them how the electrical system works, pointing out the complicated workings of large important looking objects in the basement, one of which turned out to be the hot water heater.  I may have inadvertently identified it as a piezoelectric condenser.

I know that the electricity comes into the house through a box in the basement.  There may be giant batteries in there, I'm not sure.  I do know enough not to touch the box, especially when it's mad and making that buzzing noise.  That is when you leave a small offering on the basement floor. 

For the benefit of the electrical engineers, I'll admit I'm kidding; I know that our house doesn't get its power from giant batteries.  As we all know, electricity is brought by the 'Meter man', an employee of Consumer's Energy who is exactly two meters tall, hence the title.  Each month the Meter man walks around to all the houses in the world, and comes down the chimney to deliver electricity to the good people who have paid their bill. 

Ben Franklin, the original Meter man, first harnessed electricity back around 1752, by flying a kite during a lightning storm.  This was after trying several experiments including flying a kite during a hurricane, a hailstorm, a soccer match, and an argument about cleaning up after his dog.

But how did he get the electricity from his kite into the house?  You can't really plug your vacuum cleaner into the kite unless you have a really long cord.  Ben Franklin achieved this through the use of British Thermal Units, which were available up until the Revolutionary war in 1776. 

Once electricity was available in the home, Americans found all kinds of uses for it. In 1879, Thomas Edison perfected the electric light bulb, but it wasn't until I invented my children that the light bulb was used to its full potential; heating our house and the surrounding neighborhood by illuminating empty rooms.

I know that somewhere on the edge of town, there are giant machines that make the electricity.  Or maybe there is a giant field of kites; it may depend on your area.  These generators of electricity send a current of high voltage to your house through a complicated system of wires, green boxes, and guys standing around looking at utility poles.

The electricity comes into our house measured in volts, but it is consumed at a rate measured in megajoules, largely due to the illumination of unoccupied rooms, as previously mentioned.  The rest of the house is powered by 220, or 221; whatever it takes.

An important part of any discussion on electricity should include the relationship between current, voltage, and resistance, as given by Ohm's law.  This law states that the amount of current passing through a conductor is directly proportional to the voltage across the conductor and inversely proportional to the resistance of the conductor.  Ohm's law was later amended to include a major road construction project in Idaho, and the dissolution of Social Security.

There is a great deal more I could tell you about my 'electrifying' lesson with my sons, but some of it is a little technical, and I'm not trying to impress you with my knowledge of big complicated words like 'sorghum'.

My children count on me to share my vast learning with them, so that they can someday pass this wisdom on to their children.  (At some point I will have to explain how children are made, using the price/earnings ratio.)  I will strive to impart my knowledge, such as it is, so that they may mature to their full potential, and at some point turn the light off when they leave a room.

Hope this finds you fully illuminated,

David

Copyright (c) 2006 David Smith