What are some good resources to learn how electricity works?

I highly recommend the All About Circuits textbook: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/

It starts from the very basics and builds up to quite complex circuits and their workings. It's an all-round great website, too.

The Minecraft mod Electrical Age is surprisingly useful to (literally play around and) get a feel for things. It was originally designed to teach electrical engineers once upon a time. Currently it's been a bit gamified -sure-, but the core MNA solver is still there.

Still somewhat surprising to me, this kind of simulation actually does help. It turns out that you actually do pick up a lot of intuitive feel that can serve well in an industrial context. I guess no matter how much theory you study on, it's still really insightful to just blow up some circuits. ;-)

Note that Electrical age currently works with older versions of minecraft (1.7) , though a rewrite is in the works.

https://electrical-age.net/

I'm on the opposite side of this question. I've offered to explain motorcycle charging systems in terms anyone can understand. My thought is to use the water flow analogy. Voltage => pressure. Current => flow volume. Resistance => constrictions in the system (or things where the water does work.) Flow at one point in the system must match flow in other parts except for places where water can accumulate (battery => pressure tank.)

My biggest issue is how to depict this in a format that I can share over Skype without putting in 80 hours of work. I might go with a series of pencil drawings and scan them in.

Are any of the suggested materials particularly suitable for this kind of presentation? This is intended to be a 20 minute or so presentation so I'm really just providing highlights. Points I want to get across include:

- Resistance anywhere in the circuit will cause problems. (e.g. bad ground connection.)

- Bad starting can be the result of a insufficient battery charge.

- Bad starting can be the result of high battery internal resistance.

- Bad starting can be the result of high resistance in the circuit.

- Operating with loads (e.g auxiliary lights and heated vest) that draw slightly more power than the charging system delivers can work for hours until the battery is discharged and the charging system no longer supports the loads. (DAMHIK!)

Thanks!

edit:formatting

I recommend having a look at "Practical Electronics for Inventors" by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk. The book offers a very good introduction about the basics of electricity with many helpful illustrations, written in a down-to-earth style. In case you are interested in electronics, you will find that the book covers many intermediate/advanced topics such as operational amplifiers with lots of practical examples.

If you want to begin with the basics then I highly recommend Khan Academy, starting with "Electric charge, field, and potential" [0], then "Circuits" [1], followed by "Electrical engineering" [2].

[0]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/electric-charge-...

[1]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/circuits-topic

[2]: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/electrical-engineering

I personally learned a lot from sparkfun's tutorials. The format is pretty digestible, there are some good videos, and it links out to a few other good resources as well.

https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/where-do-i-start/all

First, it is important to distinguish between electricity and electronics.

The difference is like being physicist and mechanic. Do you want to be physicist and understand electricity as a phenomena or do you want to be an engineer and use it for something useful. Believe me, there is less overlap than you think.

One good resource I have found is series of articles on http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html which mixes a little bit of both worlds.

Have fun!

Hmm. What level do you want to start from, and do you want to start from a practical/experimentalist viewpoint or go straight to the mathematical models?

How comfortable are you with "lies for children" oversimplifications of things that are extremely complicated but mostly irrelevant except in edge cases? (This phrase sounds perjorative but isn't, most of the time you don't need the complicated version and it actively impairs understanding what's going on. But it can be the only way to properly answer some questions like "what is electricity?")

I've occasionally considered writing my own, based on answering questions at electronics stackexchange, e.g. https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/245610/is-vo... / https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/272694/how-d... ; probably I would target explaining how the electron is a big source of "lies to children", and mostly an irrelevant distraction for beginner/intermediate work.

If you want a large book, The Art Of Electronics is the undisputed classic.

I got a lot from the articles on amasci.com by Bill Beaty. He's done a lot of experimenting, reading, and thinking about this stuff and how to explain it. And is a gifted communicator.

Articles on Electricity http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html

Great essays on understanding electricity, current, voltage, capacitors, transistors, batteries, static electricity etc etc, and popular misconceptions.

Walter Lewin's electromagnetism course from MIT [0]. These lectures completely transformed my understanding of physics. He mixes practical demonstration with a rigorous mathematical underpinning in a way that doesn't over simplify things.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyQSN7X0ro2314mKyUiOILa...

I'm showing my age here, but I got my start with the series of books by Forrest Mims that were available in Radio Shack stores since the 70s. They are written to be understood by complete novices, and they have hand-drawn circuits with everything explained.

http://www.forrestmims.org/publications.html

Hyperphysics presents a organized tree-like view of concepts, terminology and examples. It's easy to click around and start building up a mental model of how things relate: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html

There is a basic circuits course upcoming in HackadayU, which is targeted at newbies and is pay-as-you-wish. https://hackaday.com/2020/06/17/schools-in-session-with-hack...

Just another resource that may help! You'll have no shortage of perspectives and approaches from the links here.

I remember in high school I had trouble getting it because I thought ohms law had too many variables. Then I realized that a 5V supply will always be 5V in normal operation and ohms law means the current varies.

All of the water analogies were unhelpful for me. I did better just doing the math and seeing the result.

Someone else mentioned MITx. I did that and it was revolutionary. I also have a pretty good book called Practical Electronics for Inventors.

Try ElectroBOOM channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/msadaghd

= Geared a little more towards mechanical engineering, but Jeremy Fielding on YouTube has helped me understand some of the concepts with examples rather than textbooks. https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_SLthyNX_ivd-dmsFgmJVg

= For straight up electric concepts, I’d look at the Georgia Institute of Technology stuff on Coursera. “Introduction to Engineering Mechanics” and “Linear Circuits 1” were helpful.

The training program offered by the US Navy is quite good. Because they can only have so many people on a ship, the Navy tries not to be as specialized as the other services. So, electronic techs are expected to have especially good foundational knowledge so they can work on a broad variety of equipment.

https://www.fcctests.com/neets/Neets.htm

I enjoyed MITx circuits and electronics.

They've moved everything around since I did it, but I think this is the one: https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:MITx+6.002x_6x+1T2...

Nobody seems to have mentioned a book that appeared here 19 days ago.

[Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son (1922)]((https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23358380)). It explains electricity without any technical jargon. Pretty nice first read. His atomic model is outdated, but that doesn't seem to interfere with anything. After reading the first initial letters, you might have a greater motivation to dive into more complicated texts.

You might find the Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series helpful: https://www.fcctests.com/neets/Neets.htm

The Art of Electronics is perhaps the best textbook (in any subject) that I have read. I’d highly recommend it. It’s exceedingly pragmatic and will discuss a mix of physical underpinnings as well as applications.

I found the book "Practical Electronics for Investors" by Paul Scherz [0] to be one of the better ones.

My problem with learning electronics, and, to a lesser extent, electricity, was that most of the guides gave an 'ad-hoc' approach, giving "rules of thumb", recipes, etc. without really going into the reasons for it. They would start off with an (imo) overly technical explanation of quantum effects, then jump the more fundamental Ohm's law, etc., then jump into all the tips-n-tricks of circuit design.

For me, the two major factors to learning electronics were getting enough math sophistication that I could do calculus and linear algebra and being able to program (microcontrollers). The calculus and linear algebra gives tools for the 'passive' analysis and once you realize that most 'practical' electronics nowadays are basically routing power and signal, being able to program is the "meat" of it.

After understanding how to do passive steady-state circuit analysis, I briefly looked at how to do non-passive simulation (transistors, etc.) just to see how it was done (aka, learned how SPICE et. all do it).

Anyway, I found the "Practical Electronics for Inventors" book to be one of the few books that was practical from the outset and actually went into the theory, even if only briefly, without assuming I would get frightened by complex numbers.

There's obviously a path that doesn't involve calculus, linear algebra and programming, because people do it and have been doing it for many years, but these were the tools that helped me understand.

I would also recommend not doing this in the abstract. Arduino's [1] are, in my opinion, one of the better places to start. You can get an LED blinking within 5 minutes of onboxing. Adafruit [2] has many tutorial but they're more focused on using pre-built modules and I guess programming, to a lesser extent, than underlying theory.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Fourt...

[1] https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-uno-rev3

[2] https://learn.adafruit.com/

I wrote this a long time ago, when I was a teacher, which might be a good starting point.

https://www.bournetoinvent.com/projects/7-SC-Torch/pages/1_L...

(please excuse the crappy JS)

On another note, I would avoid the water in pipes analogy, as it fails pretty quickly. Electricity is hard to understand because you can't see its effects clearly, but at the end of the day it is caused by an electromagnetic field. Other fields such as gravitational fields, we tend to have a much more intuitive understanding of. Look for explanations that draw parallels between gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields.

I would suggest things that use the hydraulics analogy, like this: https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~dwharder/Analogy/

I'm (early) in the process of writing Ultimate Electronics Book [1], which has interactive simulations built in. It was discussed extensively here on HN 4 months ago [2].

Take a look and let me know what you think.

[1] https://ultimateelectronicsbook.com/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22315899

Along with a book (lots of good recommendations to choose from here), I recommend getting yourself some basic tools for practical experimentation: breadboard, multimeter (even a cheap Chinesium model will be fine for low voltage DC work), an oscilloscope (entry level DSO models from Chinese OEMs such as Siglent and Rigol can be had very affordably), a bench power supply (Siglent and Rigol also offer these), and some components (Joe Knows kits that are sold on Amazon are a great way to stock up on decent quality resistors, capacitors, and semiconductors to help you get to building circuits).

If you get to wanting to experiment with faster circuits, you can ditch breadboards and their parasitics for Manhattan style construction[1] and be able to build _much_ faster circuits with better success. Or you can fall down another rabbit hole, learning how to design your own PCBs. With PCB services becoming mainstream nowadays, you can learn a tool such as KiCad (free software) and send out your gerbers to be manufactured for cheap.

[1]: http://www.sdmakersguild.org/the-art-of-manhattan-style-circ...

I'm the solo dev on an industrial training website. We have a short lesson about the basic electrical units (voltage, current, resistance) that might serve as an approachable introduction or handy reference: https://www.lunchboxsessions.com/materials/basic-electrical-...

I recommend the book "Make: Electronics 2nd Edition"

I knew nothing before starting the book and knew enough by about halfway through to start pursuing my own projects.

The ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs explains electricity and electronics for the beginner, and you might also get an interesting introduction to radio, too.

I highly recommended "Every Circuit" it's a fun little electronics simulator which helps you to understand different electrical components and their interactions

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.everycircu...

I found the „Hello world from scratch“[1] series from Ben Eater incredibly helpful in connecting the dots between electricity and modern computers. Strictly speaking it is about electronics, still it is superbly presented and incredibly enlightening when coming from „normal“ software engineering perspective of things.

What actually got me there was the book „Code“ by Charles Petzold[2] which traces the development from early circuitry like light bulbs and telegraph wires to modern digital logic. I found that after being introduced to these concepts, learning about the fundamental physics was much more accessible since it was framed in the context of contemporary application.

1: https://youtu.be/LnzuMJLZRdU

2: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

I like Tony Khuphaldt books. Simple but effective. The letter to radio engineer's son were super nice IMO (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30688/30688-h/30688-h.htm)

don't forget googles and gloves

I am going through this Udemy course with my kid and it's really enjoyable. The instructor is clear and really enjoys the topic:

https://www.udemy.com/course/analog-electronics-robotics-lea...

Have a look at https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/electronics/

It's from the developer of AFL and the Guerilla Guide to CNC. Check out the root domain for lots more interesting stuff.

Not sure if it's generally applicable but I've learned a lot from reading and trying to understand how the circuits here work.

https://ludens.cl/Electron/Electron.html

Many folks have successfully used the US Navy training modules for electrical systems: http://www.compatt.com/Tutorials/NEETS/NEETS.html

I enjoyed "There are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings" by Kenn Amdahl. It's a light hearted take in the form of a silly story, but it explains things surprisingly well.

Guess I should add that it covers the basics of electricity and the basics of electronics.

Army manual on electricity https://archive.org/stream/FM55-506-1/#page/n1/mode/2up

This is an anecdote but I hope it helps someone. I couldn't understand electronics for the longest time. I read all about the individual components and I understood them individually, but I still couldn't grasp what they did when put together. Digital circuits made perfect sense to me though. Finally I learned about the "LRC" circuit. When you put those 3 components together, you can understand their behavior with some equations. You can dial in some coefficients to get the behavior (the signal/wave) that you desire. I don't know how someone thought to put those components together into a unit originally though.

https://wiredthegame.com/ is a free video game that is designed to give an understanding of how electricity works. It's probably worth playing through.

Outside of electricity fundamentals, this book is a great intro on how the grid works: https://www.amazon.com/Electric-System-Nonelectrical-Profess...

Or a shorter alternative: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-electricity-grid-works

For the basics of how electricity works (as well as for an in depth understanding) my recommendation is Electricity 1-7. It's a textbook originally published in 1966, so it doesn't cover anything digital, just good old analog electricity.

https://www.amazon.com/Electricity-One-Seven-Harry-Mileaf/dp...

I experienced the same issue when I was in college. I discovered that the way to learn for me was to find a niche category of projects and do them on my own. I actually wrote a blog post about it a while back: https://burakkanber.com/blog/how-i-taught-myself-electronics...

Try "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software." It provides a very simple introduction to electricity. Beyond that, it's just a great introductory book on computing.

https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

I originally learned electricity from Isaac Asimov's understanding physics, volume 2 when I was 13(?). I don't remember the details, but it clearly worked and helped me in all future education.

If you want to try and learn some basics, and then try apply them, both AoE (mentioned already by pjc50) and "Practical Electronics for Inventors" are good choices.

The latter is much more affordable than AoE.

Big fan of the No-Nonsense Technician-Class License Study Guide. In addition to vocabulary and terms, there's also sections about units and conversions and basic maths involved to understand the flow of electrical current as it passes through a system

https://www.kb6nu.com/study-guides/

Not affiliated in any way, just found it enjoyable, an Android game called Circuit Jam was a really fun way to refresh some basics for me.

I studied mechanical engineering in college, but we had to take a single EE course that made my head spin. What helped me a lot was the "hydraulic analogy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy

Still tricky to apply it to AC though.

I had an electronics learning lab from radio shack and loved the hands on aspects. https://www.amazon.com/RadioShack-28-280-Electronics-Learnin...

You can still find them on ebay, or similar kits if you look around.

Although, not exactly what you're hoping for, there's a good documentary on the history of electricity called "Shock and Awe - The Story of Electricty".

It sometimes helps me understand better if I get some context on things, how people were thinking before it was discovered, what kinds of hyptothesis and experiments led to another and such.

I wanted to add one more thing. You mentioned volts and amps. Try to think of them as units of measure. This helped me:

1 watt = 1 volt times 1 amp. So a watt is a volt-amp.

Similarly to how 1 joule is a newton-meter per second.

When you work with units of measure symbolically in this way, you don't need to worry about not having an intuitive grasp of a joule or a newton.

The Manga Guide to Electricity is great! Plenty of non trivial introductory textbook level material.

https://www.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Electricity-Kazuhiro-Fuji...

The whole Manga Guide to X series is great.

Øyvind Nydal Dahl has lots of good resources on his website and mailing list.

https://www.build-electronic-circuits.com/category/basic-ele...

His mailing list is high quality but also high volume

Best way to understand volts vs amps is a gravity analogy. Pulling electrons away from protons takes energy, and stores it, the same way that taking basketballs to the top of a cliff does. The voltage is the height of the cliff. The amps is how many basketballs per second you're dropping.

Eugene Khutoryansky's youtube channel is great for understanding electrical concepts as well as a bunch of other math and physics concepts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukBFPrXiKWA&t=1s

Watching Youtube videos of real people trying electrical builds (wiring a shed, van, new house, etc), then reading the comments by real electricians telling them all the places they've messed up and aren't to code has actually been a very good learning experience for me.

I recommend MIT 8.02 - Electricity and Magnetism taught by Walter Lewin [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlJoXxlSFE&list=PLyQSN7X0ro...

Follow-up question: How do I safely experiment and play with my newfound amature electrical knowledge?

I'm just going to put my two cents in and say if you start learning on "electron flow" materials instead of "conventional current" materials you'll have a much easier time understanding how just about every electronic component works.

I found this tutorial to be extremely accessible http://developer.wildernesslabs.co/Hardware/Tutorials/Electr...

I’ve enjoyed Make: Electronics from O‘Reilly. I think it’s a good mix of theory and experimentation.

https://www.makershed.com/products/make-electronics-2ed

The 'hydraulic analogy' can help with basic intuition about the terms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_analogy

I am a researcher working in the the field of charge transport, electric current, material conductivity etc. I am happy to help you understand concepts and answer any of your questions as much as I can. Please don't hesitate to contact me.

Old videos but they are clear, entertaining, and still my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/user/acmeschool/videos

The Story of Electricity - BBC Documentary FullHD 1080p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUUeGianTKM

Its sn excellent 3 hour documentary on how electricity was discovered.

MIT 6.002 course, by Prof. Anant Agarwal. Videos are on youtube. Absolutely fantastic!

I recommend the videos at this channel. Start with the basics.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk0fGHsCEzGig-rSzkfCjMw

What are you trying with self left study, and why do you want to learn?

These are important questions.

http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html

Great resource, which dispels a lot of myths and misused terminology in many other traditional explanations. Fun read!

Pirate Electronics[1] was a nice resource I backed on Kickstarter years ago.

[1] https://pirateselectronics.teachable.com/

The Demystified series of books is pretty good - lots of examples, with exercises and quizzes. On the topic, the series includes Electricity Demystified and Electronics Demystified by S.Gibilisco.

You should get a breadboard, some components and a 5v power supply. Work through some problems in Practical Electronics for Inventors 3rd Edition. A scope would be nice, but a DMM would suffice.

The Engineering Mindset has lots of good videos with nice examples - https://theengineeringmindset.com

There's a ton of content on YouTube that covers this topic.

For example I did a search for ohm's law class 11 and that search finds pages of introductory videos on that topic.

Take a look at these articles - they start with first principles:

http://amasci.com/ele-edu.html

Is there a good game where you build circuits and simulate them to accomplish various tasks?

I'd love something like shenzhen io but with more emphasis on circuits than signals

Electric Power Systems; A Conceptual Introduction by Alexandra Von Meier is a very informative book.

What worked for me was enrolling in Electronics 101 at my local community college.

Manga guide to electricity is a cute read!

Electroboom!

YouTube guy. Funny and does electronics basics.

MITx Circuits & Electronics [1][2][3] (it's in 3 parts) MOOC. They are just starting a new instance today, so your timing is perfect.

This is a seriously good course. I've been interested in electronics on and off since I was a kid. I tried learning from various Radio Shack books, but never got very far. I tried some introductory classes at Caltech, and never got very far. Tried "The Art of Electronics" and it just didn't work.

That MITx course worked.

That said, it does get fairly mathematical...circuits involving inductance and capacitance are going to be analyzed using differential equations so if you have never had any exposure to such things it could be rough going.

If you've been through college calculus you should be fine, even if (like me) you've forgotten most of it. They have some refresher material that should bring enough back to get through it.

Here's what you learn in part 1:

• How to design and analyze circuits using the node method, superposition, and the Thevenin method

• How to employ lumped circuit models and abstraction to simplify circuit analysis

• How to use intuition to solve circuits

• Construction of simple digital gates using MOSFET transistors

• Measurement of circuit variables using tools such as virtual oscilloscopes, virtual multimeters, and virtual signal generators

Part 2 teaches:

• How to build amplifiers using MOSFETs

• How to use intuition to describe the approximate time and frequency behavior of first-order circuits containing energy storage elements like capacitors and inductors

• The relationship between the mathematical representation of first-order circuit behavior and corresponding real-life effects

• How to improve the speed of digital circuits

• Measurement of circuit variables using tools such as virtual oscilloscopes, virtual multimeters, and virtual signal generators

• How to compare the measurements with the behavior predicted by mathematical models and explain the discrepancies

Part 3:

• How to construct and analyze filters using capacitors and inductors

• How to use intuition to describe the approximate time and frequency behavior of second-order circuits containing energy storage elements (capacitors and inductors)

• The relationship between the mathematical representation of first-order circuit behavior and corresponding real-life effects

• Circuits applications using op-amps

• Measurement of circuit variables using tools such as virtual oscilloscopes, virtual multimeters, and virtual signal generators

• How to compare the measurements with the behavior predicted by mathematical models and explain the discrepancies

The first course is 4 weeks:

Week 1: From physics to electrical engineering; lumped abstraction, KVL, KCL, intuitive simplification techniques, nodal analysis

Week 2: Linearity, superposition, Thevenin & Norton methods, digital abstraction, digital logic, combinational gates

Week 3: MOSFET switch, MOSFET switch models, nonlinear resistors, nonlinear networks

Week 4: Small signal analysis, small signal circuit model, dependent sources

The second course is also 4 weeks:

Week 1: Amplifiers, MOSFET large signal analysis, MOSFET small signal analysis

Week 2: Capacitors, first-order RC circuits

Week 3: Inductors, first-order step response, first-order circuit analysis, impulses, digital circuit speed

Week 4: Impulse, step, ramp superposition, digital memory, state, ZIR, ZSR

The third is 6 weeks:

Week 1: Second-order circuits, damping in second-order systems

Week 2: Sinusoidal steady state analysis, frequency response, frequency response plots, impedance methods

Week 3: Filters, quality factor, time and frequency domain responses

Week 4: Op-amp abstraction, negative feedback, Op-amp amplifiers, Op-amp filters and other circuits

Week 5: Stability, positive feedback, oscillators, energy and power

Week 6: CMOS digital logic, breaking, the abstraction barrier

[1] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-and-electronics-1-basic-...

[2] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-and-electronics-2-amplif...

[3] https://www.edx.org/course/circuits-and-electronics-3-applic...

Before you try to understand electricity try to understand work and energy. Know the definition for a watt and what that means mechanically for example.

For really basic things: maxewels equations, ohms law, and the idea that in a closed system potential and kinetic energy are constant. Just grab a university level physics book.

V=IR (ohms law) gives you most of what you need for DC circuits. Remember that power is volts x amps so you can exchange one for the other (for free in an ideal world.)

Alternatively if you want a practical understanding here’s what I learned from as a kid: forest mim’s book (it’s wrong in some ways but it works) the art of electronics (this has anything you could want to know and is well organized and written, like an O’Reilly book for electronics in general) and this really old book I found in a used book store titled “introduction to pulse circuits.”

a kite and a key