Generating some understanding

"How do wind turbines generate electricity?" - Hong

Almost all (with the exception of solar) resources for energy use rely on the process of spinning a wheel to create electricity. We call this a generator. Resources like nuclear, oil, coal, natural gas, and biomass are simply burned as a means to boil water and push the steam through a tube to spin a wheel. Others like hydroelectric, wind and geothermal use the natural movement of energy on earth to spin wheels for us.

Regardless, how do spinning wheels turn into electricity? Well, it's not magic (but it's not far off, either). To understand it, let's take a journey into the atomic world to look at electricity. Electricity is just a common person's word for moving electrons. Your cell phone works by taking electrons from one side of a battery (the negative side), moving them through an electrical circuit to the other side of the battery (the positive side). When there are no more electrons on the negative side, your battery is dead. Rechargeable batteries work by moving those electrons on the positive side back to the negative side. The electricity sockets in your house work by taking electrons from a power plant and moving them through a line to power your TV.

Now, back at the power plant, how are we turning moving wheels into electrons? Focusing on wind power, we know that moving wind spins a turbine wheel. At the end of that wheel is a little magnet inside of a copper ring.

The magnet will spin inside the copper ring.

Remember that magnets have two poles: a north pole and a south pole, or a positive pole and a negative pole. Also remember that electrons have a negative charge. When you take two magnets, the opposite sides attract. That is because positives and negatives attract. Meanwhile, similar sides push away, so a negative will push away from a negative. Thus, when the magnet is spinning, the electrons are constantly moving with the positive side (because opposites attract) and moving away from the negative side (because they repel). All of these electrons are moving around inside the copper because of the spinning magnet. And what is it called when electrons are moving? Well, let's rewind back to the beginning:

"Electricity is just a common person's word for moving electrons." - Griffin

So you see, a spinning magnet moves electrons in a copper wire. I would say you can try this at home, but drilling a hole in a magnet would not be a fun time and you would end up destroying the battery on your cell phone trying anyways. The same idea is applied to the other forms of energy too! Spinning wheels are connected to spinning magnets which move electrons in a copper wire. Don't think that oil, gas, nuclear and natural gas are any different than the amazing wind, water or geothermal resources. They work off the same idea and are much better for the environment!

BONUS: We choose copper because it is quite cheap and a very good conductor. For example, to get a 5V charge out of this, you need 500 meters of copper wire wrapped around the tube. So those wind turbines have a lot of copper in there!