IGCSE Coordinated Science: Dangers of Electricity
Identify electrical hazards including: damaged insulation, overheating of cables, damp conditions
Damaged Insulation:
- In a circuit, insulation is the plastic sheath that covers the wires. If you have damaged insulation, it means that the metal wires inside the cable are exposed.
- The potential dangers of damaged insulation could be that if a person touches the exposed wire, they could be electrically shocked, which may lead to death.
Overheating of cables:
- When you run a extremely high current through a cable, you run a risk of overheat the wire.
This is because you are supplying too much energy and this causes to wire to heat up.
- If the wires overheat, this could lead to electrical fires.
Demonstrate understanding of the use of circuit-breakers
A circuit breaker is a safety device that forces a circuit to open (switch off) when an extremely high level of current flows through the circuit.
- Normally, electricity flows in the circuit breaker through the metal contacts.
- However, if an extremely high current flows through the circuit breaker, the electromagnet get stronger and pulls the iron catch towards it.
- This causes the spring to pull the metal contacts apart, causing the circuit to open/break.
- In order to make electricity flow again, you simply press the reset button to push the iron contacts together.
Demonstrate understanding of the use of fuses
- Fuses work in a similar way to circuit breakers. They are meant to protect the components in a circuit from overheating by breaking the circuit.
- Fuses are integrated into the circuit they are meant to protect.
- A high level of current flowing through the circuit causes the wires inside the circuit to heat up.
- Inside the fuse is a metal wire with a low melting point. As a result of the running a high current through the circuit, the metal wire inside the fuse may melt. This causes the fuse and therefore the circuit to break.
- Fuses can only be used once, since the wires inside them melt away.
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