Applications

Electricity is a very convenient way to transfer energy, and it has been adapted to a huge, and growing, number of uses. The invention of a practical incandescent light bulb in the 1870s led to lighting becoming one of the first publicly available applications of electrical power. Although electrification brought with it its own dangers, replacing the naked flames of gas lighting greatly reduced fire hazards within homes and factories. Public utilities were set up in many cities targeting the burgeoning market for electrical lighting.

The Joule heating effect employed in the light bulb also sees more direct use in electric heating. While this is versatile and controllable, it can be seen as wasteful, since most electrical generation has already required the production of heat at a power station.

A number of countries, such as Denmark, have issued legislation restricting or banning the use of electric heating in new buildings. Electricity is however a highly practical energy source for refrigeration, with air conditioning representing a growing sector for electricity demand, the effects of which electricity utilities are increasingly obliged to accommodate.

Electricity is used within telecommunications, and indeed the electrical telegraph, demonstrated commercially in 1837 by Cooke and Wheatstone, was one of its earliest applications. With the construction of first intercontinental, and then transatlantic, telegraph systems in the 1860s, electricity had enabled communications in minutes across the globe. Optical fiber and satellite communication have taken a share of the market for communications systems, but electricity can be expected to remain an essential part of the process.

The effects of electromagnetism are most visibly employed in the electric motor, which provides a clean and efficient means of motive power. A stationary motor such as a winch is easily provided with a supply of power, but a motor that moves with its application, such as an electric vehicle, is obliged to either carry along a power source such as a battery, or to collect current from a sliding contact such as a pantograph.

Electronic devices make use of the transistor, perhaps one of the most important inventions of the twentieth century, and a fundamental building block of all modern circuitry. A modern integrated circuit may contain several billion miniaturized transistors in a region only a few centimeters square.

VI. Themes for the presentation. You can do it in groups, in pairs or individually.

1. An electric current as movement of electric charge.

2. The application of current.

3. The ability of electronic devices to act as switches.

4. Electronics deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies.

5. Electricity is a very convenient way to transfer energy.

Grammar in Use

I. Translate the sentences into Ukrainian. Pay attention to the functions of the Infinitives.

1. The purpose of these experiments was to observe properties of the element involved. 2. The aim of these research workers is to find out the required element.

3. The apparatus to be used in our work was constructed in our laboratory.

4. Where is the mixture to be heated?

5. To develop the supercomputer, highly developed electronics and new materials were required.

6. One of the best ways to keep the car speed steady is to use a computer.

7. Experiments helped Mendeleev to discover the properties of new chemical elements. 8. Some materials with new useful properties may be produced in space.

9. Recently radar to be mounted on cars has been developed.

10. High temperature alloys make it possible for jet engines to be operating under severe conditions for a long period of time.

II. Choose the correct form of the Infinitive.

1. He refused to help / to be helped us.

2. They are lucky to see / to have seen so many countries.

3. I don’t know what to say / to be saying.

4. Nobody told her how to have been doing / to do it.

5. I am happy to be invited / to have been invited to the party last night.

6. I hope to be invited / to have been invited next time.

7. We wanted to be recognized / to have been recognized by them at once.

8. Jane is sorry to break / to have broken a cup.

9. I am glad to work / to be working with you.

10. I am glad to work / to be working with you now.