This month s installment begins a series on electrons and electricity. The material is adapted from a lesson in NCTI s Installer Technician Course. Analyzing electron movement and energy transfer reveals the actual cause of electric current, and a firm grasp of electron behavior will help establish a strong foundation for understanding more advanced principles of electricity.
Most atoms have two or more such shells.
When an atom loses an electron, it will always be one that was in the outer orbital shell. Thus, the electrons farthest from the nucleus are more easily freed from their orbits than electrons in the inner orbits. Orbital Shells To have a balanced or stable atom, the number of electrons must equal the number of protons in the nucleus. The more electrons an atom has, the more orbits or shells it contains. For instance, hydrogen has only one electron orbiting in one shell, while plutonium has 94 electrons orbiting in seven shells.