Turn on the lights!!

Today's question has to do with electricity. Specifically, how does the light switch turn the light on and off? Well, electricity travels through the wires inside the walls of the house. Imagine that the wires in the house are a highway, with lots of lanes for the cars to drive on. The cars are the electrons, or the charged particles that make up electricity (they are also the things that shock you).

When the light is on, that is like the cars moving smoothly on the highway. The electrons are moving through the wires and get to the lightbulb to make it bright. Now, when the lightswitch is turned off, that's like when a drawbridge goes up. The cars cannot move since the drawbridge is up. When you turn the lightswitch on, it's like the drawbridge closes, and the cars can drive smoothly again.

A lightswitch dimmer works differently. When you use a dimmer to make the light darker, it's as if you were making the highway narrower, so that there are fewer lanes for the cars to drive on. Then there are fewer cars that can pass at any time - meaning there are fewer electrons that can get to the lightbulb when you use a dimmer. When you make the lights bright again, that's when the highway has all its lanes back, and all the cars can get to where they need to go.