All About Electricity!
When electricity was originally introduced into the domestic environment, it was primarily used for lighting homes, and it wasn’t until the electricity generation began, a little over one hundred years ago, that people started using it for additional chores such as cooling their food and heating their houses. While it was the early 19th century which saw the biggest changes within the electric industry, it wasn’t until the late 19th century that electricity reached its all-time high and achieved a magnificent process of electrical engineering. It soon became a necessity for modern life and a driving force for the Second Industrial Revolution.

Electricity and the Earth
Millions of years before the knowledge of electricity existed the earth was already using it excessively. The earth’s magnetic field, also referred to as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field which extends from the planet’s inner core to where it meets the solar wind; a stream of energetic particular which are emanating from the sun. As it is generated by the motion of molten iron alloys in its outer core, the Earth’s magnetic field has been seen to participate within great changes over time. The Magnetic North Pole is known to ‘wander’, but slowly enough for a compass to remain useful for navigation. At very random intervals the North and South geomagnetic poles change places with each other and cause the Earth’s magnetic field to reverse, leaving a record in rocks that allow paleomagnetists to calculate past motions of continents and ocean floors as a result of plate tectonics.

Electricity and crystals
Particular crystals such as sugar, squartz, bone, DNA, certain ceramics, and various proteins are able to generate a potential difference across their faces when subjected to an external pressure; a phenomenon process which is known as piezoelelectricity. Piezoelelectricity has been found useful in a number of applications, such as the production and detection of sound, electronic frequency generations, and generating high voltages. Throughout the years it has served as the basis of a number of scientific instrumental techniques which involve atomic resolution, the scanning probe microscopies such as MTA, SNOM, AFM, and STM. Today it acts in the everyday use of the ignition source for push-start barbecues and cigarette lighters.

Electricity and animals
Electricity can be found all throughout nature, including within animals. A number of organisms, such as sharks, are able to detect and respond to the changes in electric field; a wonderful ability which is referred to as electroreception. The electric eel however, known as one of the best Gymnotiformes, is able to detect or stun their prey via high voltages which are generated from modified muscle cells called electrocytes. Additionally, all animals are able to transmit information along their cell membranes with voltage pulses called action potentials. Their functions include communication by the nervous system between the muscles and the neurons.