What kind of objects conduct electricity

If you had one neighborhood of indoor, pampered pugs and one neighborhood of unfenced basset hounds running wild, which group do you think could spread an outbreak of fleas the fastest? So, electricity needs a conductor in order to move. There also has to be something to make the electricity flow from one point to another through the conductor.

One way to get electricity flowing is to use a generator. In the late 19th century, electricity truly had a noble or even divine reputation -- to the extent that members of the scientific community protested the idea of the electric chair as a degradation of both electricity and the scientific breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal possible.

What might these critics have thought of such modern marvels as the battery-powered blackhead remover or the dance-floor horror known as the electric slide? Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. They could think about why it is useful to have certain materials as insulators and some as conductors and think about their application in the real world.

After watching the clip, children could look around the classroom and find objects which are insulators and those which are conductors. The link between electrical conductors and insulators can be made with thermal conductors and insulators as well. Conductors and Insulators Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Define conductor and insulator, explain the difference, and give examples of each.

Describe three methods for charging an object. Explain what happens to an electric force as you move farther from the source.

Define polarization. Check Your Understanding Can you explain the attraction of water to the charged rod in Figure 6? Figure 6. Click to run the simulation. Conceptual Questions An eccentric inventor attempts to levitate by first placing a large negative charge on himself and then putting a large positive charge on the ceiling of his workshop.

Instead, while attempting to place a large negative charge on himself, his clothes fly off. If you have charged an electroscope by contact with a positively charged object, describe how you could use it to determine the charge of other objects. Specifically, what would the leaves of the electroscope do if other charged objects were brought near its knob?

When a glass rod is rubbed with silk, it becomes positive and the silk becomes negative—yet both attract dust. Does the dust have a third type of charge that is attracted to both positive and negative? Why does a car always attract dust right after it is polished? Note that car wax and car tires are insulators. Describe how a positively charged object can be used to give another object a negative charge. What is the name of this process?

What is grounding? What effect does it have on a charged conductor? On a charged insulator? How many electrons does it have? An amoeba has 1. Each copper atom has 29 protons, and copper has an atomic mass of What net charge would you place on a g piece of sulfur if you put an extra electron on 1 in 10 12 of its atoms? In human terms, we might say these electrons are drawn by curiosity or by the belief that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

In the language of electrostatics, we simply assert that opposites attract - the excess protons and both the neighboring and distant electrons attract each other. The protons cannot do anything about this attraction since they are bound within the nucleus of their own atoms. Yet, electrons are loosely bound within atoms; and being present in a conductor, they are free to move.

These electrons make the move for the excess protons, leaving their own atoms with their own excess of positive charge. This electron migration happens across the entire surface of the object, until the overall sum of repulsive effects between electrons across the whole surface of the object are minimized.

Use your understanding of charge to answer the following questions. When finished, click the button to view the answers. One of these isolated charged spheres is copper and the other is rubber. The diagram below depicts the distribution of excess negative charge over the surface of two spheres.

Label which is which and support your answer with an explanation. See Answer Answer: A is rubber and B is copper. Sphere A shown a non-uniform distribution of excess charge; so sphere A must be made of an insulating material such as rubber. Sphere B shows a uniform distribution of excess charge; one would reason that it is made of a conductor such as copper.

Which of the following materials are likely to exhibit more conductive properties than insulating properties? Aluminum and silver are metals, making them good conductors. The human body is a fairly good conductor. When wet, its an even better conductor. A and B are characteristic of positive and negative objects. As for C, both insulators and conductors can be charged. As for D, this has nothing to do with the conductive properties of materials. As for E, neutrons are located in the nucleus and are "out of the way" of mobile electrons.

Suppose that a conducting sphere is charged positively by some method. The charge is initially deposited on the left side of the sphere.

Yet because the object is conductive, the charge spreads uniformly throughout the surface of the sphere. Rule out A since atoms are not capable of moving within solid spheres. Rule out B since protons are not capable of moving in electrostatic demos.

C is the proper explanation since the negative electrons are attracted to the region of positive charge. The electrons migrate towards the left side of the sphere until there is a uniform distribution of positive charge.