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STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. 9
PHYSICAL SCIENCE
MODULE OVERVIEW
Physical science is the study of matter and energy. That covers a lot of territory because matter refers to
all the “stuff” that exists in the universe. It includes everything you can see and many things that you cannot
see, including the air around you. Energy is also universal. It’s what gives matter the ability to move and
change. Electricity, heat, and light are some of the forms that energy can take.
Physical science, in turn, can be divided into chemistry and physics. Chemistry is the study of matter
and energy at the scale of atoms and molecules. For example, the synthetic fibers in the swimmer’s suit were
created in labs by chemists. Physics is the study of matter and energy at all scales—from the tiniest particles
of matter to the entire universe. Knowledge of several important physics concepts—such as motion and forces
—contributed to the design of the swimmer’s suit.
It’s not just athletes that depend on physical science. We all do. What might be some ways that physical
science influences our lives? We depend on physical science for just about everything that makes modern life
possible. You couldn’t turn on a light, make a phone call, or use a computer without centuries of discoveries in
chemistry and physics.
MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this module, you should have:
1. grasped systematically the basic knowledge of physical science needed for the further study of
modern science and technology.
LEARNING CONTENTS
Physics of Sound
Traveling Waves
Sound is produced when something vibrates. The vibrating body
causes the medium (water, air, etc.) around it to vibrate. Vibrations in
air are called traveling longitudinal waves, which we can hear. Sound
waves consist of areas of high and low pressure called compressions
and rarefactions, respectively. Shown in the diagram is a traveling
wave. The shaded bar above it represents the varying pressure of the
wave. Lighter areas are low pressure (rarefactions) and darker
areas are high pressure (compressions). One wavelength of the
wave is highlighted in red. This pattern repeats indefinitely. The wavelength of voice is about one meter long.
The wavelength and the speed of the wave determine the pitch, or frequency of the sound. Wavelength,
frequency, and speed are related by the equation speed = frequency * wavelength. Since sound travels at 343
meters per second at standard temperature and pressure (STP), speed is a constant. Thus, frequency is
determined by speed / wavelength. The longer the wavelength, the lower the pitch. The 'height' of the wave is
its amplitude. The amplitude determines how loud a sound will be. Greater amplitude means the sound will
be louder.
Interference
When two waves meet, there can be two kinds of interference patterns;
constructive and destructive. Constructive inteference is when two
waveforms are added together. The peaks add with the peaks, and the troughs
add with the troughs, creating a louder sound. Destructive interference
occurs when two waves are out of phase (the peaks on one line up with
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troughs on the other). In this, the peaks cancel out the troughs, creating a diminished waveform. For example,
if two waveforms that are exactly the same are added, the amplitude doubles, but when two opposite
waveforms are added, they cancel out, leaving silence.
Standing Waves
Vibration inside a tube forms a standing wave. A standing wave is
the result of the wave reflecting off the end of the tube (whether closed
or open) and interfering with itself. When sound is produced in an
instrument by blowing it, only the waves that will fit in the tube
resonate, while other frequencies are lost. The longest wave that can
fit in the tube is the fundamental, while other waves that fit
are overtones. Overtones are multiples of the fundamental. The areas
of highest vibration are called antinodes (labeled 'A' on the diagram),
while the areas of least vibration are called nodes (labeled 'N' in the
diagram). In an open pipe, the ends are antinodes. However, in a pipe
closed at one end, the closed end is a node, while the blown end is an
antinode. Thus, closed pipes yield only half the harmonics.
Transverse Waves
If a string that is fixed on both ends is bowed or plucked, such as in
a violin, vibrations are formed that are in a standing wave pattern,
having nodes at the fixed ends, and an antinode in the center. Several
harmonics are also produced, in a similar way to the standing wave.
Overtones
Overtones are the other frequencies besides the fundamental
that exist in musical instruments. Instruments of different shapes
and actions produce different overtones. The overtones combine to
form the characteristic sound of the instrument. For example, both
the waves below are the same frequency, and therefore the same
note. But their overtones are different, and therefore their sounds
are different. Note that the violin's jagged waveform produces a
sharper sound, while the smooth waveform of the piano produces a
purer sound, closer to a sine wave.
LEARNING CONTENTS
Forces and Motion
It's hard to believe, but everything in the world is in motion, all the time. Even things that look perfectly still
are packed with atoms that are vibrating with energy. Understanding how motion works was one of the great
milestones of science and it's credited to the brilliant English physicist Sir Isaac Newton. His laws of motion,
written over 300 years ago, were so well stated that scientists still use them in most situations today. The
basic idea Newton taught us is that motion is caused by forces—which is easy enough to understand: kick a
ball (the force) and it flies into the air (the motion). But forces don't always make things move: a bridge has
lots of forces acting on it, but it doesn't go anywhere. Also, the "motion" forces produce is sometimes a shift in
the direction in which something is moving or a change in its shape. So what exactly are forces and how they
do they produce these different kinds of motion? It's time to take a closer look at the science of moving things!
Forces are the hidden power behind everything that happens in our world—and beyond. Forces make
your heart race and your lungs pump; they swing the planets round the Sun and bind atoms tight.
A force is a pushing or pulling action that can make things move, change direction, or change shape.
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Kicking a ball involves you applying a force (a push with your foot) that makes it fly upward. But once it's
shooting through the air, the invisible force of gravity pulls it back down to Earth—and that's a different force
taking over.
Look a bit more closely and you'll see some other forces working on the ball too. When your foot meets
the blown-up ball, the ball squashes inward a little bit because it's made of plastic or leather. So there's a
force there too, causing the ball to change shape. Because the ball is stretchy (elastic), it rapidly expands
again, returning to its original shape—and it flies into the air by pushing out against your foot. That's also a
force. When the ball finally hits the ground, it squashes in again before flexing back out, and that makes it
bounce into the air, maybe several times. More forces! As the ball rolls across the ground, it scrapes against
the grass or concrete and gradually comes to a halt. Another force is at work there—the force of friction—
stealing the ball's energy and bringing it to rest. So everything that happens to the ball, in its entire journey
from your foot to the ground, involves a series of forces pushing it, pulling it, stretching it, or dragging on it.
How many Forces?
When we're looking at how things work or move, we try to identify the force that's responsible. So when a
flying ball zooms to the ground, we say "Aha! That's the force of gravity." But it's very rare to find only one
force acting on something. Most of the time, there are several different forces working at once, all pulling or
pushing with different strength, often in completely different directions. The effects of all these forces add
together or subtract from one another to produce an overall force (or perhaps no force at all).
Sometimes all the forces are exactly in balance—their effects cancel one another out. If you look at a giant
suspension bridge, it's not going anywhere or changing its shape, so you might think there are no forces
acting on it. Wrong! There's the weight of all the cars driving across it pulling downward, plus its own weight.
So why doesn't the bridge tumble into the river? The force of gravity pulling down on the bridge is exactly
balanced by tension (pulling forces) in the suspension cables tugging it back up again. Because all the forces
on a bridge are equal, the bridge itself goes nowhere—so it's safe for the cars to drive across.
Artwork: Bridges are giant static structures, but that doesn't mean they're force
free. Bridges carry loads by balancing them with stretching forces (tension,
shown in blue), squashing forces (compression, shown in red), or both.
Different types of bridges do this in different ways. In a suspension bridge, the
towers are in compression (squashed down) while the huge cables that
support them are in tension (pulling tight).
But there are also times when different forces act on something without
canceling out. Suppose you're in a sailboat, making very little progress in a strong wind, so you decide to use
your outboard motor. Waves might be pushing your boat in one direction (that's one force), the wind could be
pushing a different way (another force), and, depending on how you steer, your engine will be pushing
another way (a third force). There's also a force between the bottom of the boat (the keel) and the water. All
these forces act in different directions, a bit like a multi-directional tug-of-war. If your boat moves in a certain
direction, one of the forces must be winning. We call that the resultant force—because it's the overall force
that results when several forces act on one object at the same time. It's just as though the resultant force is
the only force that's acting on the object and all the other forces have disappeared.
Forces and Movement
When a force acts on an object, it often makes it move faster or in a different direction. Once something is
moving, you don't need a force to keep it moving: it will carry on moving all by itself unless another force stops
it. When a rocket blasts into space, you need a force to make it lift off to begin with and to overcome the force
of Earth's gravity. But once the rocket is in space, it will carry on moving all by itself until and unless another
force stops it.
Any time you want to make something speed up (accelerate) or slow down (decelerate), you need to use
a force. In fact, you always need to use a force if you want to alter how something is moving. English scientist
Isaac Newton was the first person to figure out properly how forces change the way things move. He worked
out three simple principles, called Newton's laws, that explain how this happens.
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Turning Forces
It takes a force to make something move in a different way, and that includes changing the direction in
which something is moving even if its speed stays the same. If you want to make something go round in a
circle, you have to apply a force to make it turn and keep on applying that force to keep it turning. That makes
sense: something moving in a circle is constantly changing direction, so you have to apply a force all the time.
In the sport called throwing the hammer, an athlete swings a heavy weight around their head using a long
steel wire. As long as they keep pulling the wire, they're applying a force, which is called centripetal force, and
this force keeps tugging the weight round and round in a circle. As soon as the athlete lets go of the hammer,
there's nothing to provide the centripetal force anymore, so there's nothing to keep the hammer turning in a
circle. At that point, it flies off in a straight line before curving through the air as gravity brings it back down to
the ground.
Look carefully at things whirling in circles and you'll always find a centripetal force, somewhere, that's
doing the turning. As your laundry tumbles round in a clothes washer, it'll collect a huge amount of water,
which has to be removed during the final spin. The washer drum whirls at high speed, constantly pushing the
clothes round in a circle and providing centripetal force to keep them turning. The water inside the clothes
pushes through their fibers. There's nothing to hold it in place—no centripetal force—so it flies out through
holes in the outside of the spinning drum, helping to dry your clothes. Hurricanes are another example of how
forces make things turn in a circle. There's very low pressure at the center of a hurricane and higher pressure
toward the edge. That means there's an overall pressure pushing toward the center and this provides the
centripetal force that makes the air spin around, giving the powerful whirling motion that makes hurricanes so
very destructive.
Artwork: Spin-drying laundry uses the power of centripetal force. 1) A clothes washing
machine has a rotating drum (white) with holes in it mounted inside a static drum
(red) that's completely sealed. 2) As the inner drum spins, it pushes your clothes
round in a circle, supplying the centripetal force that makes them turn. 3) The water
inside the clothes can move freely and there's no centripetal force to make it move in
a circle, so it flies off in straight lines through holes in the drum. 4) The water collects
in the outer drum. 5) At the end of the spin cycle, the water pumps out through a drain
pipe.
Sticking Forces
Forces make things move—but they also bring moving things to a halt. Roll a toy car over a rug and it'll
quickly come to a standstill. The force of friction steals the car's energy and slows it down. Friction is the
force between two different objects that are in contact, either when they're locked together and touching or
when one of them slides past the other.
Perhaps surprisingly, friction can help things to move and stop them from moving at exactly the same
time. Take a wheel, for example. When a car goes round a corner, friction holds its tires in place, giving
powerful grip that locks the car to the road and stops it skidding outward. As the tires grip the road, the wheels
push forward, moving the car along. At exactly the same time, however, friction between the wheels and the
axles that hold them steals some of their energy, slowing them down. So friction can be both a good thing and
a bad thing. When you park on a hill, friction is the reason your car is still there when you get back next day.
But it's also one of the reasons you have to put so much gasoline in your tank: friction between your car and
the air you drive through steals quite a lot of the energy that would otherwise be speeding you down the road.
In machines and engines, friction is usually quite unhelpful. The constant rubbing of one part against
another wears out even very hard and durable metals like stainless steel. That's why engineers
use lubrication: by squirting liquids and gels between moving parts, we can help them slide past one another
with less friction, reducing wear-and-tear, cutting maintenance costs, and reducing energy losses.
Forces that Change Shape
Have you ever tried tugging the aluminum ring-pull of a drinks can and found it suddenly snaps off in your
hand? What you're trying to do is use a force to make the ring-pull move and change direction at the same
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time. But instead of doing what you expect, one part of the ring-pull snaps away from the other. This is an
example of how forces can change an object's shape, instead of making it move or change direction. Every
time you change something's shape (and that includes breaking or snapping it), you're putting forces to work.
Whether you're crushing a can for recycling, tearing a piece of paper to shreds, or stretching the elastic on a
catapult, you're making something into a new shape. That involves rearranging the atoms inside it, and,
because atoms are generally locked tight in solids, it takes force.
Exactly what effect a force has depends on the materials involved. Soft materials, such as rubber, bend
and flex very easily and spring back to their original shape when you take the force away again. Materials like
this are called elastic. A lot of materials change shape easily but don't spring back the way they were; these
are called plastic (though they're not always made of plastics—even soft metals, like gold, can be plastic if
they readily change their shape).
Some materials don't seem to change shape when you apply forces, though they do change very
gradually over a period of time. If you straighten a paperclip, you're using a force to make it plastic—to cause
what's called a plastic deformation (a change of shape that isn't reversible). If you do this several times, the
paperclip will snap in half—a different kind of reversible change. That's an example of what's called metal
fatigue, which is where repeated forces cause a material to break completely. It's one of the reasons that
parts fail in machines like aircraft and automobiles after flexing back and forth hundreds, thousands, or
sometimes even millions of times.
Making Forces Bigger
You can make quite a lot of force with your body. Weightlifters can raise huge lumps of metal above their
heads, while some professional strongmen can pull trucks, trains, and planes even with their teeth. But there's
a limit to what even the toughest athlete can do. Thanks to human ingenuity, that's not the end of the story.
With clever things called simple machines, we can make our arms and legs move much bigger and heavier
weights. Simple machines include levers (such as wrenches), pulleys, ramps, wheels, and gears. All of them
work by allowing your body to produce more force than it can make alone. So if you use a wrench to turn a
rusty nut, you're using the power of a lever to magnify a force: the longer the lever, the more the force at the
center is magnified. You apply less force at the edge (so it feels easier), but the wrench magnifies the effort
you apply, converting it into more force at the center (so the nut turns more easily). The catch is that you have
to turn your end of the wrench a bigger distance to make the tough rusty nut budge.
Giant everyday machines like cranes, diggers, bulldozers, and combine harvesters use a whole series of
simple machines to carry out complex jobs. Most of them have hydraulic rams, which are liquid-filled cylinders
a bit like water pistols, that are thicker at one end than the other. As the liquid moves from a smaller volume to
a bigger one (from the thin end to the thick one), it slows down but gains force. And that's how a hydraulic
ram, operated by a person's arm, can do something like lifting a truck clear of the ground.
Mastering Forces
Forces keep us firmly in our place. You're sitting still reading this right now because atoms in your
chair, electrically repelling atoms in your body, are creating an upward, pushing force that exactly balances
the force of gravity, pulling down. Gravity is the biggest, boldest force most of us ever encounter and it
stretches all the way from Earth's fiery center to the other side of the universe.
Great human achievements have often meant mastering—and overcoming—forces like gravity. When the
Wright brothers made the first powered flight in 1903, they used wings and an engine to generate an upward
force called lift that was strong enough to overcome gravity. Astronauts blasted up into space after pioneers
like Robert Hutchings Goddard figured out how to use space rockets to make enough force to "escape,"
temporarily, from the pull of Earth's gravity. When Jacques Piccard and Don Welch dived almost 11km (6.7
miles) to the bottom of the deepest ocean in 1960, they did it in a super-reinforced diving bell (a bathyscaphe
named Trieste). It had walls 12.7cm (5.0in) thick to resist the enormous, crushing force of water pressure at
that depth—something else caused by Earth's gravity.
Anyone who tries to go further or faster for longer has to master forces of one kind or another. Engineers
who've developed cars that can beat speed records have learned to battle forces like friction and drag (air
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resistance). Stars of track and field who run further or jump higher have trained their bodies to produce more
force for longer so they can conquer their opponents. Armies with faster planes, tougher tanks, or guns that
fire bullets further are all using forces to their advantage.
Some of us use our brains to think smarter. Others think more creatively and do surprising and original
things. But every physical achievement ultimately boils down to using science to overcome forces like gravity
and friction, so we can do "impossible" things no-one has ever done before. Understand the science behind
the scenes and the force will always be with you!
Motion
We've already seen that forces can make things move, but how exactly are forces and motion linked
together? How can we measure different amounts of motion or figure out where a flying bullet or a soaring
space rocket is going to end up? Isaac Newton's work helps us tie forces and motion together in an easy-to-
understand way. It also lets us calculate how things will move when we apply forces to them.
Newton's Three Laws of Motion
Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) summarized how things move with three simple laws. They're often
simply called Newton's laws and they apply to pretty much everything (except very tiny subatomic things in
the quantum world and objects moving close to the speed of light):
Things that are still stay still and things that are moving keep moving with a steady speed unless a
force of some kind pushes or pulls on them.
When a force acts (pushes or pulls) on an object, it changes the object's speed or direction (in other
words, makes it accelerate). The bigger the force, the more the object accelerates.
When a force acts on an object, there's an equal force (called a reaction) acting in the opposite
direction. This law is sometimes written "action and reaction are equal and opposite."
Newton's Laws in Practice
How do those laws run in practice? Suppose you're standing on a skateboard. Unless you kick against
something, you'll stand on it forever going nowhere. That's Newton's first law in action. Now if you kick against
the sidewalk, you start moving: your speed increases, and the harder you kick the faster you accelerate.
There's an example of Newton's second law. And what about the third law? Kick back against the pavement
and the pavement pushes you with an equal and opposite reaction force that propels you forward.
Only motion
One important thing to remember about the laws of motion is that they apply only to things that are moving
—things in motion. So, for example, if you stare down at your feet and wonder why you're standing firmly on
the ground without sinking in, the explanation has nothing to do with Newton's third law of motion (action and
reaction). You're standing still because repulsive, electrostatic forces between atoms in your shoes and atoms
in the ground (pushing upward) exactly counterbalance the force of gravity (pulling down). There is no motion,
so Newton's second and third laws don't apply. The first law does apply: your body is still because there is
no overall force acting on it. If the ground suddenly collapsed, the upward force would no longer be enough to
balance your weight. There would be a net downward force, making you accelerate into the ground.
Measuring Motion
How fast is that plane? Will my car get there faster than yours? Which of us will use the most gas on the
drive home? How can you fire a rocket up from Earth and have it land precisely on the Moon? If you want to
answer questions like this, you need to be able to measure motion. We have four main ways of doing that,
using speed and velocity, acceleration, momentum, and kinetic energy.
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Speed
A sports car can go 50 times faster than you can walk and 8 times faster than you can run. That's because
its engine turns gasoline into power much more quickly than your body can burn food to pump your muscles.
The faster a car burns gas, the quicker it can go—the more speed it has.
In science, we define speed as the distance something goes in a second. You can figure out a car's
average speed by dividing how far it goes by how long it takes to get there. If a car is going at 100km/h
(60mph), it can travel 100km (60 miles) in an hour.
This is the formula for speed:
Speed = d/t
Here, d is distance and t is time.
You can see from this that a car is a kind of time machine: you can use its speed to get somewhere more
quickly. If you go twice as fast, you can arrive in half the time. The faster you go, the sooner you get there,
and the more time you save. Of course, you can never actually arrive before you leave—that would be taking
the science a bit far!
Velocity
Velocity is not just another word for speed: it means your speed in a certain direction. When a Formula-1
car races round a tight bend, its speed stays the same, but its velocity is always changing because it's turning
and changing direction the whole time.
Suppose you drove from the North Pole to the South Pole in a straight line at 100km/h (60mph) and then
drove back again at the same speed. Your average speed would be 100km/h (60mph), but your average
velocity would be zero. That's because your velocity from South to North would be exactly opposite the
velocity from North to South and the two would cancel out.
This is the formula for velocity:
Velocity = d/t
Here again, d is distance and t is time. You'll notice this formula is the same as the formula for speed. But
remember when you have to state which direction the velocity is heading in too.
Acceleration
If you're a driver, acceleration means putting your foot down to go faster. But if you're a scientist,
acceleration also means stamping on the brakes. That's because acceleration means any change in your
velocity. Speeding up is an acceleration, but so is slowing down—it's just a negative acceleration. And
because your velocity is your speed in a certain direction, you accelerate every time you go round a corner,
whether you change speed or not.
A car is a heavy lump of metal and it takes a lot of force to get it moving, speed it up, slow it down, or turn
it round. The heavier something is, the more force it takes to accelerate. That's why trucks take longer to
accelerate than cars, even though they have much bigger engines.
People compare cars by seeing how many seconds they take to accelerate from 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph). If
a car can go from 0-100 km/h in 5 seconds, it changes its velocity by 100km/h in 5 seconds, so its
acceleration is 20 km/h per second. That's the same as changing your speed by 5.5 meters/second every
second. Scientists write that 5.5 m/s/s or 5.5m/s 2 (and say it out loud as "five point five meters per second
squared").
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This is the formula for acceleration:
a = v/t
Here, v is velocity and t is time.
Momentum
An object's momentum is a measure of how much it wants to keep moving—and how long it can exert a
force for when it stops. You can figure out something's momentum by multiplying its mass by its velocity:
momentum = mv
Here, m is mass and v is velocity.
If two things crash together, their total momentum is the same before and after the collision. This is a
basic law of physics called the conservation of momentum. If a car crashes into a wall, bits of the wall start
moving—so they gain the momentum the car loses and that's what slows it down.
Kinetic energy
It takes energy to make something move, and the faster it goes the more energy it needs. In other words,
energy feeds speed. The energy something has when it's moving is called kinetic energy. You can figure out
a car's kinetic energy from this formula:
kinetic energy = ½mv2
Here, m is the car's mass and v is its velocity. If you double the weight of a car (by adding a caravan on
the back), you need to use twice as much energy to go at the same speed. If you want to double your speed,
you'll need four times as much energy, because energy is related to the square of your speed.
What is an impulse?
Isaac Newton's second law tells us that force causes acceleration, and we can write that law as an
equation:
F=ma
So the more force you supply, the more acceleration you get. But the same equation tells us that a = F /
m, so the more massive an object, the less it will be accelerated by a force of the same size. If you weigh
twice as much as a friend and I give you both the same push, your friend will accelerate twice as quickly.
Now we also know from up above that a = v / t, so we can rewrite Newton's second law like this:
F=mv/t
In other words, we can define force as the rate of change of momentum: the more quickly something's
momentum changes, the more force is acting on it.
Rearranging the equation one more time, we get:
Ft=mv
The change in momentum is equal to the force acting on something multiplied by the time for which it acts,
and it's called an impulse. The impulse is simply F × t.
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The Sporting Impulse
Impulses are a really important concept in sport—for two reasons. Suppose you want to kick a soccer ball
a long way, or hit a tennis ball really hard at your opponent. You'll need to give it lots of momentum (or
energy, if you prefer) and to do that, you'll need to apply your boot (or tennis racket) to the ball for as long as
possible—with what's called a follow-through. Making t (the time for which the force is acting) as long as
possible produces a bigger change of momentum. If you think about it, t is the only thing you can really
change if you're a world-class athlete: the ball has a constant mass (m) and you can only supply so much
force (F), so the only way to maximize momentum (m v) is to maximize the time (t) for which you apply your
force.
There's another good reason why sports people try to increase the time for which they apply a force with
their muscles. Suppose you're catching a fast-moving baseball or cricket ball. It's fairly heavy and hurtling
toward you at high speed, so it has quite a lot of momentum. If you bring the ball to a halt slowly, by pulling
your hands and arms into your body, you increase the time (t), so the force your hands and arm feel (m v / t)
is smaller and the ball hurts you less. Try to catch a ball without moving your hands or arms and you're
making t very small, which means m v / t is bigger and the ball will hurt you more. The same is also true of
hitting a ball with a baseball bat or a tennis racket, throwing a javelin, or applying a force with your muscles in
any other way. Generally, all sports people try to apply forces with their muscles for as long as possible to
reduce the impact on their body and the risk of injury.
LEARNING CONTENTS
You probably use many electric devices every day, including lights and appliances such as hair dryers and
microwaves. Where does the electricity come from to power these devices? The answer is magnetic fields.
From Magnets to Electricity
Just about a decade after Oersted discovered that electric current produces a magnetic field, an English
scientist named Michael Faraday discovered that the reverse is also true. A magnetic field produces an
electric current, as long as the magnetic field is changing. This is called Faraday’s law.
Electromagnetic Induction
The process of generating electric current with a changing magnetic field is called electromagnetic
induction. It occurs whenever a magnetic field and an electric conductor, such as a coil of wire, move relative
to one another. As long as the conductor is part of a closed circuit, current will flow through it whenever it
crosses magnetic field lines. One way this can happen is pictured in Figure below. It shows a magnet moving
inside a wire coil. Another way is for the coil to move instead of the magnet.
This simple setup shows how electromagnetic induction occurs.
The Current Produced by a Magnet
The device in the circuit in Figure above is an ammeter. It measures the current that flows through the
wire. The faster the magnet or coil moves, the greater the amount of current that is produced. If more turns
were added to the coil, this would increase the strength of the magnetic field as well. If the magnet were
moved back and forth repeatedly, the current would keep changing direction. In other words, alternating
current would be produced. This is illustrated in Figure below.
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If a magnet is moved back and forth relative to a coil of wire, alternating current is produced.
Electric Generators and Transformers
Two important devices depend on electromagnetic induction: electric generators and electric transformers.
Both devices play critical roles in producing and regulating the electric current we depend on in our daily lives.
Electric Generators
An electric generator is a device that changes kinetic energy to electrical energy through electromagnetic
induction. A simple diagram of an electric generator is shown in Figure below. In a generator, some form of
energy is applied to turn a shaft. This causes a coil of wire to rotate between opposite poles of a magnet.
Because the coil is rotating in a magnetic field, electric current is generated in the wire. If the diagram
in Figure below looks familiar to you, that’s because a generator is an electric motor in reverse. Look back at
the electric motor in Figure above. If you were to mechanically turn the shaft of the motor (instead of using
electromagnetism to turn it), the motor would generate electricity just like an electric generator. You can learn
how to make a very simple electric generator by watching the video at the URL below. Making your own
generator will help you understand how a generator works.
This diagram shows the basic parts of an electric generator. Compare the generator with the electric motor.
Generators may be set up to produce either alternating or direct current. Generators in cars and most
power plants produce alternating current.
A car generator produces electricity with some of the kinetic energy of the turning crankshaft. The
electricity is used to run the car’s lights, power windows, radio, and other electric devices. Some of
the electricity is stored in the car’s battery to provide electrical energy when the car isn’t running.
A power plant generator produces electricity with the kinetic energy of a turning turbine. The energy to
turn the turbine may come from burning fuel, falling water, or some other energy source. You can see
how falling water is used to generate electricity in Figure below.
A hydroelectric power plant uses the kinetic energy of falling water to turn a
turbine and generate electricity.
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Electric Transformers
An electric transformer is a device that uses electromagnetic induction to change the voltage of electric
current. A transformer may either increase or decrease voltage, but it only works with alternating current. You
can see the components of an electric transformer in Figure below.
An electric transformer connects two circuits with an iron core that becomes an electromagnet.
As you can see in Figure above, a transformer consists of two wire coils wrapped around an iron core.
When alternating primary current passes through coil P, it magnetizes the iron core. Because the current is
alternating, the magnetic field of the iron core keeps reversing. This changing magnetic field induces
alternating current in coil S, which is part of another circuit. In Figure above, coil P and coil S have the same
number of turns of wire. In this case, the voltages of the primary and secondary currents are the same.
However, when the two coils have different numbers of turns, the voltage of the secondary current is different
than the voltage of the primary current. Both cases are illustrated in Figure below.
When coil S has more turns of wire than coil P, the voltage in the secondary current is greater than
the voltage in the primary current. This type of transformer is called a step-up transformer.
When coil S has fewer turns of wire than coil P, the voltage in the secondary current is less than the
voltage in the primary current. This type of transformer is called a step-down transformer.
Whether a transformer increases or decreases voltage depends on the relative number of
turns of wire in the two coils.
Electrifying the Home
Power plant generators produce high-voltage electric current. Many power plants also use step-up
transformers to increase the voltage of the current even more (see Figure below). By increasing the voltage,
the amount of current is decreased, so less power is lost as the electricity travels through the power lines.
However, the voltage in power lines is too high to be safe for home circuits. The voltage in power lines may be
as great as 750,000 volts, whereas most home circuits are 240 or 120 volts. One or more step-down
transformers decrease the voltage of current before it enters the home. Other step-down transformers within
the home lower the voltage of some of the home’s circuits.
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Transformers play an important role in supplying energy to the home.
LEARNING ACTIVITY 1
Performing the Activities on the following:
-Force for moving objects
-Producing Sound
-Force and Motion Using Electricity at Home
SUMMARY
Physical science is the study of the physical properties of materials. Young children learn the properties of
matter by learning about weight, color, size, and other observable characteristics. This does not just happen in
the science area or during science lessons. Provide children with ramps and balls; wheels and levers;
magnets and magnetic accessories; and children will do these discoveries all day, every day, inside and
outside the classroom.
REFERENCES
Griffith, W. Thomas and Juliet Wain Brosing. The Physics of Everyday Phenomena: A Conceptual Introduction to Physics,
6th ed. NY: McGraw Hill, 2009. Hewitt, Paul G. Conceptual Physics 11th edition. San Francisco: Pearson, 2015. March,
Robert . Physics for Poets, 5th ed. NY: McGraw-Hill 2003. Naylor, John. Out of the Blue: A 24-hour Skywatcher's Guide.
England: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pasachoff, Jay and Alex Filipenko. The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New
Millenium. California: Thomson-Brooks/Cole, 2007. Shipman, James T., Jerry D. Wilson, and Charles A. Higgins. An
Introduction to Physical Science. Singapore: Cengage Learning Asia Pte Ltd, 2013. Spielberg, Nathan and Bryon D.
Anderson. Seven Ideas that Shook the Universe, 2nd ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 1995
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