Electricity

Electricity

Electricity
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 9 to 12
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	10.36

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		hydroelectric, rushing, electronics, navigation, electronic, naturally, generator, ancient, industry, development, lower, practical, material, scan, natural, scientist
	content words:		Ben Franklin, United States, Game Boy, Ways My Life Would Be Different Without Electricity

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Electricity
By Sharon Fabian

¹     The ancient Greeks knew about static electricity back around 500 BC. They had discovered that a gold colored material called amber could be made to attract small objects, like bits of a feather, when the amber had been rubbed with a piece of fur. Ben Franklin discovered the electricity in lightning in 1752, although nobody knows exactly how he did his experiment. Franklin was a careful scientist, and would have known that flying a kite in a thunderstorm could have deadly effects, so there must be a little more to the story that what we usually hear. Both the ancient Greeks and Ben Franklin had discovered examples of naturally occurring electricity. Their discoveries were amazing in their time, but not really useful yet. One of the first practical uses of electricity occurred in Dover, England in 1858, when electricity was first used to power the lamp in a lighthouse.

²     Later in the 1800s and into the early 1900s, electricity developed into a major industry. Homes in the cities usually received electric service first; by the 1930s about two-thirds of the households in the United States received electric power. Farms, on the other hand, were among the last to be served; only about 10 percent of farms had electric power in the 1930s. Today the United States produces and uses far more electric power than any other area of the world.

³     Americans use electricity in their homes, and also to power industry, and to provide communication and transportation. Home uses of electricity include heat and light, as well as power to run appliances and games. Factories use electricity to power the machines used to produce all kinds of goods. Communication systems that depend on electricity include telephone service, television and radio, and the Internet. There are streetcars and subways powered by electricity. Other types of transportation, such as planes and ships, depend on electricity for navigation equipment. A car's spark plugs use electricity.

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