Electric current and voltage

Have you ever heard a crackle when taking off your jumper? This is caused by tiny electric charges on your clothes. It's called static electricity.

Your jumper and shirt get electrically charged as they rub together, and then negative electric charges jump from one to the other. This makes sparks that crackle - you can even see them in a dark room.

Electric current

When electric charges move in a wire, we say that an electric current flows in the wire. It's like the way a current of water flows in a river.

For an electric current to flow, we need two things:

• something to…