This Topic In Depth explores some of what the Web has to offer on the subject of electricity.

The first site from Thinkquest.org called Electricity Online (1) gives an excellent overview, with topics ranging from circuits and transformers to electricity's discovery and history. The site even contains games, activities, and quizzes. The second site, Edison's Miracle of Light (2) from PBS.org, is a companion site to a PBS special of the same name. The site explores the life and accomplishments of one of the 19th century's greatest inventors, offering a timeline, recordings, and more. From Clark Public Utilities of Clark County Washington, the next site is called Electricity (3). This Web site offers information from a public utilities perspective, with subjects like electrical safety, how electricity gets to your home, what it costs to run appliances, and so on. Next, from the US Department of Energy, is a site that offers an Overview of the Electric Power Industry (4). Here, visitors can find information, data, publications, statistics, and more relating to electric power in the US. The fifth site from ExploreScience.com is called Multimedia Activities (5) and contains just that. Geared towards students, the four interactive lessons include an introduction to electricity and magnetism, an introduction to plasma, coulomb force, and lissajous figures. The next site, provided by the BBC, is another interactive learning site, called Activity Electricity (6). Users click through a lesson about circuits and current, answering questions along the way. The site also contains a fact sheet and quiz. From NASA, the Dataset Information site (7) contains data archived and cataloged by the Global Hydrology Resource Center relating to lighting. Several datasets from varying sources are available for free and include such things as Long Range Cloud to Ground Data. The last site is offered by the Canada Science and Technology Museum and is called Background Information for Electricity (8). This Web site for kids offers simple descriptions and illustrations about electricity, who discovered it, conductors and insulators, fuses, and more. The electricity workshop link also contains lesson plans and additional student activities.