Pictured above: Nikola Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory.

Benjamin Franklin originally named electricity “electrical fluid.”

The human brain uses the same amount of energy as a ten-watt lightbulb, or a string of 50 indoor Christmas lights.

A bolt of lightning can reach temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.

An electric eel can generate a shock of up to 600 volts. Only around 40 volts is sufficient to kill a person if all circumstances are just right.

Every now and then people with wired phones would die from electrocution. A person might perch the phone on the edge of their bathtub. Then, the phone might fall into the bathtub while ringing with its 48 volts. Smartphones run on much lower voltages.

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous kite experiment to prove that lightning was a form of electricity.

Nikola Tesla once caused a power outage in Colorado Springs by overloading the electrical grid with his experiments. He could charge a room with so much static electricity that he could hold a lightbulb in his bare hands that would light up.

In a 1980 television show, popular astronomer Carl Sagan said, “All of the radio waves from space ever studied equal less than the power of a single snowflake hitting the ground.”

That wasn’t quite true then, but it was close. Today, with many more radio telescopes and many more years of collecting astronomical radio waves, the total power of all the waves studied from space is still much less than the energy your body used while you read this post.

The first electric power station was built in 1882 in London.

The electrical resistance of the human body can range from about 1,000 ohms to over 100,000 ohms.

Lightning strikes the earth about 100 times per second. At any given moment there are on average 180 thunderstorms around the earth.

The amount of electricity required to power a single toaster for an hour could power a smartphone for over a year.

The world’s largest battery, located in South Australia, can store enough electricity to power 30,000 homes for an hour.

Solar farms and wind farms are great for generating free electricity, but have a big weakness. What happens when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow? To deal with that, we need batteries. Big batteries. One of the best kind of batteries is two lakes, one at a higher elevation than the other. During electrical production times, water can be pumped to the higher lake. When more electricity is needed, the water can flow to the lower lake through generators.

The electric motor was invented by Thomas Davenport in 1834.

The human body can generate a small electric current, which can be detected by an electrocardiogram (ECG) or an electroencephalogram (EEG).

In science demonstrations, lemons are often used as an electrical source to power a small electric motor or lightbulb.

Electric cars were first developed in the 1830s, but did not become popular until the 21st century. The batteries back then were incapable of powering the vehicles for more than a few miles.

A lightning bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity.

The first electric street lighting was installed in Paris in 1878.

Amps are a measure of volume, like water coming out of a large diameter hose. Volts are a measure of power, like water squirting a long distance out of a nozzle. Volts times amps equals watts.

Higher voltages can be transferred by wire greater distances than lower voltages.

Tesla was fascinated by alternating current, often at very high frequencies. Alternating means that the flow of the electricity keeps reversing from positive to negative, then negative to positive, etc. In the United States, that happens sixty times per second (60 Hertz). In Europe, it’s generally 50 cycles per second.

Mr. Tesla knew that the voltage in alternating current can be stepped up easily for transmission great distances then stepped back down at the destinations. At the same time, Thomas Edison was trying to convince the public that direct current, which he promoted, was superior. However his direct current had to be delivered at dangerously high voltages, or could only be transported a few city blocks.

To prove his point, which was actually incorrect, Edison executed an elephant and several dogs in front of big crowds in New York City. He used huge amounts of alternating current to kill the animals, while only a little direct current would have done the job.

Eventually, Nikola Tesla’s alternating current, along with the help of George Westinghouse, won out. However, Edison ended up making a fortune from all his patents for electrical and non-electrical items, while Nikola, a great engineer, but not a good businessman, ended up dying in poverty.

A person can be electrocuted by as little as 10 milliamps of electricity as long as the voltage is sufficient.

The first successful electric car was built by Thomas Parker in 1884.

The electric current in a household electrical outlet is typically 120 volts in the United States and 240 volts in Europe.

The first power transmission line, which delivered electricity from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, New York, was built in 1896.

One horsepower is 745 watts. However, since motors are not perfect in converting electricity into motion, it takes more than 745 watts to actually create one horsepower.

The first electric guitar was invented in 1931 by George Beauchamp.

The electric chair was first used in 1890 to execute a convicted murderer named William Kemmler. It was supposed to be more humane than hanging or decapitation.

The Tesla coil, invented by Nikola Tesla in 1891, is still used in musical instruments and other applications today.

The electric field around a wire is proportional to the amount of current flowing through it, and inversely proportional to the distance from the wire. With a tool called an ‘amp probe’ you can measure measure or monitor how much electricity an item is using.