Physics of Electrical Components

• A small battery like a garage door opener battery puts out less than 1 amp, and not for very long either.
• A PC power supply typically delivers 10-25A on the yellow +12V line.  
• To power up a PC power supply without the motherboard, just ground the green wire.  I use a paperclip for this.
  
• The 5V and 3.3V have somewhat higher amp ratings, but usually less total power delivered (due to the lower voltage).  Thus, most high end graphics cards and CPUs mostly draw 12V power as the input to their core voltage DC-DC converters. 
  
• To reduce fire hazard, a PC power supply will turn itself off ("crowbar") if you draw too many amps.  To reset the PC power supply, just wait; if impatient, you can unplug the power supply and ground the AC input pins (this discharges some internal capacitor).
  
• A car's lead-acid battery will deliver hundreds, or even thousands of amps at 12V.  Unlike a PC power supply, you can burn the plastic insulation from thin wires with even a momentary short, and can rapidly melt metal.
  

• An arc consists of ionized gas at thousands of degrees, and glows extremely brightly.  Carbon arc lamps were used for indoor and auto illumination in the late 1800's, but operation is finicky (striking the arc is tricky) and bulb life is short ("up to" 100 hours).
• The energy in an arc can be used to melt metals for welding, called arc welding.  Common stick, MIG, and TIG are all forms of arc welding.
• Sadly, nothing about arc is safe: it moves unpredictably with the wind, convection, or magnetic fields, it can burn your skin, the UV can burn your eyes, and it's conductive to electricity.  However, arc is beautiful!
  

• Put enough amps through a wire, and it will get hot enough to glow.
• Keep the wire in a vacuum, and make the wire from tungsten so it won't melt, and you have a light bulb.
• Put a thin wire in a glass tube, and you have a fuse (burns and opens the circuit if the amp draw is too high).
  
• Coat a thin wire in pyrotechnic material, and you have an electric match (used to set off fireworks remotely, under computer control).
• It takes some electrical energy to push current through a wire.  The longer the wire, the more resistance (an entire 500 foot spool of thin 20ga doorbell wire reads about 5 ohms).  High power resistors are still "wire wound", the active components made from 100% wire!  Low power resistors are usually a thin film of carbon.
  
• Moving electrons induce a magnetic field around a wire.  With enough electrons, or fields wrapped in the same direction so the field is reinforced, you have an electromagnet.
• The field gets stronger when you add a ferromagnetic core in the middle of the coil.
  
• Huge electromagnets are used for picking up and moving large pieces of iron, including difficult to pick up scrap.
• An inductor stores electrical energy in the magnetic field of a coil, which smooths out current flow.
  
• An electromagnetic coil that moves a switch is called a "relay".  In the 1940's and early 1950's, most computers were built using relays as the switching element.  Relays are slow (a few hundred hertz, tops) but strong (10A ratings are common) and reliable (against EMP, electrostatic shock, hooking the batteries up backwards, being dunked underwater, ...).
  
• The magnetic field from an electromagnet can be used to move objects, making a linear or rotating motor in a huge variety of ways.  We used the Lorentz force to spin a tiny neodymium magnet, which at 12V spits off big showers of sparks.
  
• Electromagnets also "work backwards" as generators, turning changing magnetic fields into electrical current.

• Power law: P = I V, or watts = volts * amps. 
  
• Ohm's law: V = I R, or volts = amps * ohms.