I had a dream about Thomas Datt and me chilling at this hotel kind of place and there was someone in the lobby trying to use 120 volt AC to jump start a car and i was trying to explain the difference between Alternating Current and Direct Current using the sine wave about how the voltage of AC goes up and down in a periodic motion with the voltage being the difference between the amplitude of the wave at the highest and lowest points known and the crest and trough. AC current can come in many forms because the frequency of the wave can vary. For example, our standard house electricity in America has a frequency of 60 cycles per second or 60 Hz (Hz = Hertz after the scientist who the term is coined after). In Europe the house electricity is 50 Hz instead of 60. Other forms of AC can be lower or higher. For example, in El Wire, the phosphorous is excited by frequencies around 3000 Hz. If you took a 9 volt battery which has a frequency of 0 Hz because the negative and positive voltages are static and remain at a constant potential then the El Wire would not light up. In the same regard, you cannot charge a car battery with AC current because the battery cell operates on chemical principles of electro-negativity whereby the voltage is built up in one direction and if you pass AC through a battery it is trying to push in two directions in a sinusoidal pattern which attempts to put current into the cells and then draw it back out at a fast rate which has a net effect of zero since the area under the curve of one half period of a sine wave cancels out the area under the curve of the other half.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 20:11:47 +0000
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