What is electricity?

Electricity is an invisible form of energy created by activity between atoms, the tiny materials that are the building blocks of the entire universe. Even your body is made of atoms.

Electricity travels through what's called a circuit, going around and through objects until it gets back to where it started. Here's a simple experiment that will teach you an important lesson about electric circuits: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach out and touch your brother or sister or one of your friends. Did you both feel the spark? This is an example of electricity moving through a circuit.

When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of electrons, which are tiny particles used to create electricity. The electrons traveled through your bloodstream and collected in your finger, where they formed a spark that leaps to your friend or sibling, travels down his or her feet and back into the carpet, completing the circuit. Check out The Curious Kids Science Newsletter to learn more fun projects you can try to demonstrate how electricity works.

You can't store electricity. Once you generate it, you have to use it right away or it disappears. Here in the Pacific Northwest, a lot of electricity is generated by the dams you see on the Columbia River and other local rivers. At these dams, water flows through turbines and spins those turbines, which generates electricity. At Clark Public Utilities, we built a power plant called the River Road Generating Project that uses natural gas to spin a turbine and create electricity.

Back in the "old" days (before there was TV!), there were no dams or other devices to generate electricity. People used fireplaces to keep their houses warm and wood- or coal-burning stoves to cook food and heat water for baths. Kerosene lamps were the only way you could bring light into your home at night. Things have changed a lot in our modern world. Can you imagine not being able to flip a switch in your room and have the lights come on? Or not having a TV, refrigerator, dishwasher, toaster, computer, hair dryer and a bunch of other kinds of appliances in your house? We all tend to take electricity for granted - until there's a power outage and we realize how much we rely on it.