Current Electricity Flow of Electrons Engineering Tutorials

The Nature of Electricity
The modern theory defines matter as electrical in nature. All matter is made up of extremely small particles called molecules, each of which has the properties of matter of which it is a constituent. The molecules, in turn are made up of atoms, which are the smallest units of several elements. An atom consists of central nucleus of positive charge around which small negatively charged particles, called electrons, revolve in different paths or orbits.

Free Electrons
The electrons which can be easily removed or detached from an atom are called free electrons.
In metals, the atom lie very close together in regular formed crystal lattice. The nearness of one atom to another causes the electron in the outer orbit or valence electrons of each atom to be attracted by the nucleus is relatively weak. As a result, a large number of electrons are free to drift about interatomic space from atom to atom. These are called free electrons. The free electrons can be easily removed by applying a small amount of external energy.

Charge
A body is said to be charged if it has either excess or deficit of electrons from normal due share. If an electron is freed from a neutral atom, the proton predominate and the atom is said to posses a positive electric charge.

Unit
The unit of charge is coulomb and 1 coulomb is equal to charge on 628 by 10 to the power of 16. We say that a body has a positive discharge of ano coulomb, it means that it has a deficit of 628 by to the power of 16 electrons from normal due share.

Electric Potential
It is a measure of the density and sign of the electric charge at a point relative to that at some time. Thus electric potential, like electric charges and electric current is a phenomenon of displaced charges that exist in matter. For example, consider a copper rod of six meters length having the same number of electrons and protons distributed uniformly throughout.
If by some means, such as intercepting the flux in a magnetic field, one billion electrons can be shifted towards one end of the rod, that end will posses positive charge. The two ends of rod will have a different of potential. Work has been done to create this difference of potential energy.

Nucleus
It is the central part of an atom and contains protons and neutrons. A proton is positively charged particle while the neutron has nearly the same mass as proton, but has no charge. Therefore, the nucleus of an atom is positively charged. The sum of protons and neutrons constitute the entire weight of an atom and is called its atomic weight, it is because the particles in the extra nucleus has negligible weight as compared to protons or neutrons.

Extra Nucleus
It is the outer part of an atom and contains electrons only. An electron is a negatively charged particle having negligible mass. The charge on an electron is equal but opposite to that on a proton. Also, the number of electrons is equal to the number of protons in an atom under ordinary conditions. Therefore, an atom is neutral as a whole. The number of electrons or protons in an atom is called its atomic number.

All About Electrical Relays, Principles, Classification and Requirements

Protective relays
Relay is a device by means of which an electric circuit can be controlled by the change in the same circuit or in other circuit. The primary function of the protective relay is to sense the fault in the system, compare the signal so obtained with  the reference signal under normal conditions of operation and amplify the error signal such that the trip coil of the circuit breaker is energized and faulty section of the system is disconnected from the rest of the system.Under normal conditions of the system, a protective relay is required to keep itself alert such that in case of any emergency, the action may  be taken almost instantneously.It should remain silent under normal condition. Under certain operating condition, the power system components are required to carry more than rated current on a temporary basis. During peak load condition, the power system components arc intentionally over-loaded. Under such conditions of operation, often known as abnormal condition, it is not necessary to disconnect the section from the system. When the operation parameters are unduly strained, the protective relays are required to energize the alarms such that proper precautions are taken.

The Basic Principles of Relays
In electromechanical relays, there are one or more coils, movable elements, contact system, etc. The operation of such relays depends on whether the operating torque/force is greater than the restraining torque/force.The relay operates, if the net force, F in equation given below is positive. Where F is the net force, Fo is the operating force and Fr is the restraining force. In other words, the relay operates only if the operating force is greater than the restraining force. In electromechanical relays, the operating torque is produced by electromagnetic attraction/electromagnetic induction/thermal effects of electric current. The restraining torque is given by springs.

The Classification of Relays
Protective relays are classified as follows according to their construction and the principle of operation.
1. Electromagnetic relays These are actuated by Direct current or Alternating current quantities.
2. Electomagnetic induction relays
3. Electothermal relays
4. Static relays these employ transistors or magnetic amplifiers to obtain the operating characteristic.
5. Electrodynamic relays these are operate on the same principle as moving coil instruments.
6. Under-voltage, under-current and under-power relays.
7. Over-voltage, over-current and over-power relays
8. Direntional or reverse current relays
9. Differential relays
10. Distance relays

The Basic Requirements of Protective System
The efficient protective relaying system should posses the following characteristics:
1. Speed 
Minimum voltage and minimum fault time operate.
2. Selectivity
Maximum continuity of service by disconnecting the faulty part of the system.
3. Sensitivity
Capability of operating reliably under the actual desired conditions.

Protective Relays
These are the devices that detect abnormal conditions in electrical circuits by measuring the electrical quantities which are different under normal and faulty conditions. Due to abnormal conditions, voltage, current, phase and frequency may change. After detecting the fault, the relay operates to complete the trip circuit which results in the opening of the circuit breaker and isolating the faulty circuit.

All About Electrolysis and Batteries Facts and Tutorials

1. The two main defects of the primary cells are local action and polarization.
2. Local action in the primary cell can be rectified by amalgamating the zinc electrode with mercury.
3. One factor affecting voltages of the primary cell is the types of plates and electrolyte.
4. Distilled or approved water is used in electrolytes because it prevents or slows down local action.
5. In electroplating, the positive electrode is called the anode.
6. The mass of an ion liberated at an electrode is directly proportional to the quantity of electricity which passes through the electrolyte. This statement is associated with laws of electrolysis.
7. The mass of material deposited over an electrode is proportional to quantity of electricity and electro chemical equivalent.
8. The condition of a secondary cell can be determined by the terminal voltage and strength of the electrolyte.
9. Nickle-cadium dry cell is becoming popular in power supplies for electronic calculators because it is rechargeable.
10. One advantage of a secondary cell is that it can be recharged.
11. Cell are connected in parallel to increase the current capacity.
12. Cells are connected in series to increase voltage output.
13. To obtain a high voltage of about 1.9 volts from a dry cell on would use magnesium cell.
14. While charging a battery, charge the battery in an airy room, remove the vent plugs during charging, keep flames etc. away from the battery and keep the charging current rate not more that 3 to 6 amperes.
15. If the internal resistance of a discharged battery is more it is not desirable to leave a lead storage battery in a discharged state for a long time mainly because plates will become sulphated.
16. To keep the terminals of a lead acid storage battery free from corrosion, it si advisable to keep the electrolyte level low.
17. If a sixty ampere hours battery has sixty seven ampere discharge rate, it will provide a current of six amperes for ten hours.
18. The ampere hour capacity of battery depends on the area of the plates.
19. Electrolyte of a storage battery is formed by adding suphuric acid to water.
20. Other types of accumulators besides the lead acid type are nickle cadmium batteries.
21. Electro-chemical equivalent is mass of the element liberated per unit of quantity of hydrogen.
22. Impurities in an electrolyte can cause an internal short circuit condition called local action.
23. The action of a dry cell is to change chemical action to electrical energy.
24. Polarization in dry cell can be got rid of by chemical means.
25. Gassing occurs in the process of charging an accurnuiator.

Terms used in Electrolysis

Anode
The plate or electrode through which the current enters the electrolyte or it may be defined as the plate or electrode connected to the positive terminal of supply.

Anions
The ions having negative charge are known as anions.

Atom
An atom is the smallest particle of matter which takes part in a chemical action.

Atomic weight
The atomic weight of an element is the relative weight of its atom compared with that of an atom of hydrogen. The atomic weight of H atom is taken as unity.

Cathode
The plate or electrode through which the current leaving the electrolyte or the plates connected to the negative terminal of supply mains.

Cations
The ions having positive charge are known as cations.

Chemical equivalent
The chemical equivalent of an element is the mass which is chemically equivalent to a unit mass of hydrogen.

Ions
When the current is passed through electrolyte, the electrolyte gets chemically decomposed, molecules of the electrolyte splits up into two parts known an ions.

Molecule
The molecule is the smallest particle of any substance which is capable of separate existence in a chemical form.

Valency
The valency of an element is the number of hydrogen atoms with which it will combine or with which it will replace in a compound.

Things You Should Know About Direct Current Generator Tutorials

The Definition
We know that Direct Current Generator is a machine which converts the mechanical energy into electrical energy. The generator is usually driven by a steam  engine or a diesel engine or an electric motor which are called prime movers.

The Principle
The principle of Direct Current Generator is it works on the principle of Faraday's Laws of electromagnetic induction. According to this law the conductors or armature are rotated in the magnetic field and electro magnetic force is induced in these conductors which is collected from the commutators fitted on the shaft of armature.

The Loop
The simple loop of a Direct Current Generator when the plane of the coil is at right angles to the lines of flux, the flux linked with the coil is maximum but the rate of change of flux linkage is minimum. As coil continues to rotate further, the rate of change of flux linkage increases, till it attains maximum value of 90 degree to 180 degree, the flux linked with the coil gradually increases resulting in decrease in induced electro motive force till it reduces to zero at 180 degree. A reversal of the trend occurs during next half revolution. For unidirectional current, the ends of the coil are connected commutation whose function is to reverse the connections to the rotating coil through fixed brushes and to collect the electro motive in one direction.

Four Reasons for failure of a generator to build voltage:
1.Defective contact of brushes with conmmutator due to dirt, insufficient pressure, tight brushes, dirty or rough commutators or projecting intersegment micas.
2. High resistance or open circuit in the shunt field circuit, faulty contact or burnt resistance in shunt regulators.
3. Loss of residual magnetism.
4. Reverse field connection or reversed speed.

Ten Reasons for sparking and Bad Bommutations:
1. Overload
2. Projecting intersegment micas.
3. Earth fault on armature
4. Armature short circuit
5. Incorrect brush position
6. Wrong grade of brushes
7. Reversed interpole coils
8. Brushes not properly bedded
9. Brushes not equally spaced
10. Worn Brushes

Question and answer about D.C. Generator
1. The armature of a DC generator is laminated to reduce eddy current loss.
2. In a shunt generator the voltage built up is generally restricted by the saturation of iron.
3. Copper loss in DC generators varies with load.
4. Full load efficiency of the generators is 92.51 percent.
5. Shunt generators are preferred for parallel operations.
6. In DC generator the ripples in the direct electro motive force generated are reduced by using commutator with large number of segments.
7. The functions of an interpole is to neutralize crossfield of armature reaction and obtain ideal commutation.
8. Equalizer connection are required when paralleling two compound generators.
9. A simple method of increasing the voltage of DC generator is to increase the speed of rotation.
10. In the commutation process it is the current which is getting reversed.

25 Tips You Need To Know About Current Electricity Engineering

1. The curve representing Ohm's law in linear.
2. The condition in Ohm's Law is that the temperature should remain constant.
3. The Ohm's Law can be applied with certain reservations to electrolytes.
4. The presence of an electric current is made known by the effects produced.
5. An electric current can neither be seen nor touched.
6. Three important effects produced by the presence of a current heating, magnetic and electric shock.
7. Thermistor has negative coefficient of resistance.
8. International ohm is defined in terms of resistance of a column of mercury.
9. Resistors commonly used in power circuits are wire wound resistors.
10. When current flows through a heater coil it glows but the supply wiring does not glow because the resistance of heater coil is more than that of supply wires.
11. If the voltage applied across an electric press is reduced by 50 percent, the power consumed by the press will be reduced by is 25 percent.
12. In a parallel circuit the potential difference across the resistance is always constant.
13. In a series circuit the current is constant.
14. Voltage applied across a circuit acts as a force.
15. The resistance of carbon filament in carbon-filament lamps increases when its temperature is decreased.
16. The heating effect of current has an undesirable side effect in a vacuum cleaner.
17. When current flows in a conductor, the heat is produced because of inter atomic collision.
18. The temperature coefficient of a conductor is defined as the increase in resistance per ohm pwer degree centigrade.
19. The value of Joule's mechanical equivalent of heat,is equal of 4.2 Joules per calorie.
20. It was experimentally found by James Precott Joule that the heat produced in a current carrying conductor is proportional to the square of current.
21. The resistance of a conductor increases when its temperature is increased.
22. The specific resistance, depends upon the nature of the material of the conductor only.
23. Resistance of a conductor increases when its length increases.
24. The resistance of conductor is the hindrance by which the conductor opposes the flow of the current.
25. The minimum requirements to cause the flow of current are a voltage source and a conductor

All About Capacitors Electrostatics and Electric Lines of Force

Some Important Characteristics of Capacitors
1.The current through capacitor is zero, if the voltage across it is not changing with time.
2. A capacitor is sort of open circuit to direct current.
3. The capacitor never dissipates energy but only stores it.
4. A capacitor resits an abrupt change in voltage across it.
5. A finite amount of energy can be stored in a capacitor even if the current through capacitor is zero, such as when the voltage across it is constant.
6. It is impossible to change the voltage across a capacitor by a finite amount in zero time, for this requires infinite current through the capacitor.

Electrostatics Question and Answer
1. Relative permitivity of vacuum is unity.
2. In the electric field, the potential is the work done in joules to bring positive charge of one coulomb from infinity to that point.
3. The unit of field intensity is newtons/coulomb.
4. Coulomb's law for the force between electric charges most closely resemble with Newton's law of gravitation.
5. Mica medium has highest value of dielectric strength.
6. The maximum value of potential gradient in cable occurs in conductor.
7.A region around a stationary electric charge has electric field.
8. Inside a hollow spherical conductor electric field is zero.
9. The effect of the dielectric is to reduce the working voltage.
10. Electrolytic capacitor is the most commonly used type but it has two disadvantages, namely low insulation resistance and suitable for Direct current only has high capacitance and low insulation resistance.
11. In a radio a gang condenser is a type of air capacitor.
12. A sphere of one metre redius can attain a maximum potential of three kilo volt.
13.The power dissipated in a pure capacitor is zero.
14. In a capacitor the eletric charge is stored in dielectric.
15. One farad is one coulomb per volt.
16. If a dielectri is placed in an electric field, the field strength decreases.
17. If the medium of a parallel plate capacitor consists of mica and air, the capacitance is increased by increasing the area of plates.
18. A capacitor with capacitance is charged through a resistance. The time constant of the charging
circuit is given by RC.

Properties of Electric Lines of Forces
A line of force is supposed to start or emanate, from a unit with a positive charge. A line of force does not form closed loop unlike a magnetic line of force. The line of force is always normal to the surface of the body at the point from where they originate or terminate. No two lines of force can across each other. An electric line of force in the same direction repel each other and those in opposite direction attract each other. There will be neutral point in this case between the two sphere. An electric line of force has a tendecy to take an easy path.

Transmission and Distribution Lines Key Facts and Tutorials

Key Facts and Tutorials On Electrical and Distribution Lines

1. The economical section of a feeder can be obtain by applying Kelvin's law.
2. There should be be no break in the neutral, which is usually earthed at the supply end, of a two wire Alternating Current distribution system because excess current protection would be affected.
3. In actual practice the potential at the two feeding points is unequal. To calculate the voltage drop, the difference in potential is converted into ampere metres and the moments of the lower feeding point start from this initial value.
4. Uniformly loaded distribution fed at equal potential from both ends is treated like the distributor because the voltage drop is exactly halved.
5. Voltage drop in a uniformly loaded distributor fed at once end is calculated by assuming the whole of the load concentrated at middle point.
6. For Alternating current distribution the power factor of the load has to be taken into consideration and the calculations become cumbersome. The approximate method which gives results with in plus or minus five percent of the actual voltage drop involves calculating the centre of gravity of the load, resistance and reactance per double run and average power factor.
7. To determine the distribution of load at the point of minimum potential, the moments in ampere metres about of the feeding points must be equal to the moment in ampere metres about the other feeding point.
8.At the point of minimal potential in a distributor fed from both ends, the load at the point is supplied from right and left hand feeding points.
9. With point loads in a distributor fed at both ends, in order to determine the maximum voltages drop it is necessary to know the point of minimum voltage.
10. For a three wire Direct Current distributor fed at one end, if the total voltage drop in the neutral is positive it is added to the positive drop and deducted from the negative drop.

Limitation of high transmission voltage
a. Increased cost of line support
For high transmission voltage, the insulation required between the conductors and the earthed tower is more. This increases the cost of line supports.
b. High towers:
For high transmission voltage, the clearance between conductors and groundo should be more. Therefore, higher lower is required.
c. Longer cross arms:
FOr higher transmission voltage, distance between the conductors should be more. Therefore, longer arms are required.

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All About Magnetism and Electromagnetism How It Works

All About Magnetism and Electromagnetism How it works Tutorials
Magnet
A magnet is a substance that attracts pieces of iron. The phenomenon by which this attraction takes place is called magnetism.

Magnets are two types
Natural Magnets
The natural magnets are those iron ores which are obtained from mine and have the property of attracting iron pieces naturally.

Artificial magnets
The artificial magnets are those which are created by artificial means. An artificial magnet can be further divided into two types are temporary magnets and permanent magnets.

Temporary magnets
A temporary magnet is that in which magnetism remains temporarily. If a wire is wound on a soft iron piece and direct current is passed through the wire, then soft iron piece becomes a temporary magnet. It is because the iron piece will retain magnetism so long as the current is flowing.

A Permanent magnets are made from steel which is in general harder than soft iron apart from steel, alloys like cobalt steel, tungsten steel, etc. are also used as permanent magnets. These are used in Direct current machines to create magnetic flux, electrical instruments, moving coil loudspeaker etc.

Properties of Magnet
1. A magnet always attracts iron and its alloys
2. The magnet has two poles and when it is freely suspended it comes to rest pointing north and south directions. The end which points towards north is known as North-pole and the other which points toward south is known as South-Pole. The attracting power of the magnet is concentrated around two points one each at end ends.
3. Like poles repel and unlike poles attact each other.
4. If a magnet is broken into pieces, each pieces becomes and independent magnet.
5. A magnet can import its properties to any magnetic material.

Magnetic effect of electric current
When and electric current flows through a conductor, a magnetic field is set up all along the length of the conductor. In this connection following are the important points worth noting.
1. The magnetic lines of force are circular in a plane perpendicular to the current.
2. The field near the conductor is stronger and becomes weaker as we go away from the conductor.
3. The magnetic field becomes stronger if current is increased and vice-versa.
4. The direction of the field is reversed it current is reversed.

Facts of Magnetism and Electromagnetism
1. A magnet is a piece of iron or other magnetic material which can attract small pieces of thesematerial towards it.
2. A freely suspended magnet always rests in north south direction.
3. A natural magnet is called lodestone.
4. A magnet is able to attract nickel, cobalt and steel.
5. Externally, magnetic line of force travels north to south.
6. A material commonly used for shielding or screening magnetism is soft iron.
7. Magnetism is the property of certain materials of attracting small iron pieces toward them.
8. The magnetism that remains in a magnet after the magentising force has been removed is called its residual.
9. Iron becomes magnetized by induction when it is near to one end of a magnet.
10. Magnetic lines of force are called flux.