Effects of Electric Current

Effects of Electric Current

You performed many experiments with electricity in Class 6 and learned quite a few interesting facts. For example, you saw that a bulb can be made to light up by making electricity flow through it. The light of the bulb is thus one of the effects of electricity. There are several other important effects of electricity. We shall study some of these effects in this chapter. There are 3 main effects of electricity as,

* Heating effect

* Magnetic effect (Magnetism)

* Chemical effect

Heating effect

When an electric current passes through a wire, the electrical energy is converted to hear. In heating appliances, the heating element is made up of materials with high melting point. An example of such a material is nichrome (an alloy of nickel, iron and chromium).

The heating effect of electric current has many practical applications. The electric bulb, geyser, iron box, immersible water heater are based on this effect. These appliances have heating coils of high resistance.

Generation of heat due to electric current is known as the heating effect of electricity. 

Factors affecting Heating Effect of current

1. Electric Current

2. Resistance

3. Time for which current flows

Electric Fuse

Electric fuse is a safety device which is used in household wiring and in many appliances. Electric fuse has a body made of ceramic and two points for connecting the fuse wire. The fuse wire melts whenever there is overload of the current in the wire. This breaks the circuit and helps in preventing damage to costly appliances and to the wiring. In electrical devices, a glass fuse is often used. This is a small glass tube, in which lies the fuse wire.

MCBs (Miniature Circuit Breaker)

MCBs have been replacing electric fuse from wirings at most of the places. The electric fuse has a big practical problem. Whenever the wire fuses, one needs to replace the wire to resume electric supply. More often than not, this proves to be a cumbersome task. Miniature circuit breakers break the circuit automatically. One just needs to switch it on to resume the electric supply. Many models of MCBs have a built in mechanism by which the electric supply is automatically resumed.