Electricity at work
Physics Narrative
for 14-16
It is all about power in the electrical working pathway
Think about the effect that your choices in assembling the circuit have on the loops. That's the place to start analysing circuits.
Understanding electrical working is the key to mastering this episode
Carefully set up a circuit to perform a particular quantity of working, and see the energy shifted in a controlled fashion, with the correct quantity accumulating just where you want it. To set it up correctly, you will have to choose the resistances in the different parts of the circuit, and the potential difference of the supply. As you have seen, choosing to place different resistances in different parts of the circuit determines where the electrical working happens, by fixing the currents and potential differences.
Don't forget that the sum of the powers in all of the dissipative pathways must be equal to the energy shifted from the supply in each second. No amount of cunning engineering can violate the conservation of energy.
