Energy

I remember as a young child growing up in South Africa a particularly close call with electricity.

My father was replacing the plug on his electric drill. I’m not sure exactly why, but this process produced a metre long black electric cable with a functioning set of prongs to plug into the wall, and two orange copper wires poking out the other end.

Spotting this, I immediately took the plug-end, marched over to a wall socket, and plugged it in. As it happens, the copper wires were resting loose against the skin of my thigh. I remember the exquisite power of that jolt, and the cable falling from my leg, and the entire house going into darkness.

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It is not obvious what the electric outlets in a suburban house, the way that the thigh muscle of a human being contracts, and, say, a lightning bolt kilometres high, have in common. Many of us will think it’s obvious, but that is because of what we have learnt in school about physics.

If you dropped all of that underlying cultural and scientific k…