According to the American Institute of Physics (AIP), one of the Physics textbooks most used in the US is Conceptual Physics, by Paul G. Hewitt. How do I know this book? Because my two teen age children have used it, and I regularly help them with their homework. This textbook, Part-V, Chapters 22 through 25, describe the physics of electricity and magnetism. Chapter 23 is titled "Electric Current" This chapter contains a very graphic explanation to your questions, with much detail about current, resistance, how batteries are used, etc. Perhaps I was rude in my first answer. That was unintended. The point I was trying to make is that much of the information is available in textbooks, and surprisingly to many (including me), it is provided to most students since the early days of high school. In my high school days, if my memory serves me right, we were playing with batteries and AC power so many times that we were actually doing dangerous things with electricity, precisely because we were experimenting (toying is a more accurate term) with short circuits. We learned very quickly what a short circuit was, and how careful we needed to be when working with electricity. But we did not have such beautiful textbooks as those used today. In those days, we received everything from our teachers, and luckily, they were very good. I have recently been exposed to young students in their first college year at the local university. One of the biggest surprises I have experienced is that many of them (I am older, working on a graduate program) appear to have forgotten everything they learned in high school, not just about Physics, but also about Math in general. They need a lot of help during their first year to bring them up to speed for the first courses they will be taking if they choose engineering, electrical engineering in particular. Finally, if the Forum Moderator allows, my initial comment was in no way intended to upset anyone, but a knee-jerk type reaction on my side to the question I saw here. Sometimes it is a little discouraging to see little activity in forums like this,(take a look at the forums in the IEEE website, which is global and yet there is little activity there) in a website that actually has some fresh content that catches the attention of the visitor. I got here because of the Videos section above. I have enjoyed so much the creativity they have in those videos. I hope to be able to participate in this forum to share enthusiasm towards electrical engineering. There is su much to learn, and time seems so short to study it........
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