What the HECK is a Phasor? Alternating Current Explained.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- Alternating current is kind of wild. Electric charge drifting back and forth, governed by wave mechanics. But what if I told you there's a better way using imaginary numbers and the complex plane? It's called a phasor diagram.
Nick Lucid - Host/Writer/Editor/Animator
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TIME CODES
00:00 Cold Open
00:32 Why Rotation?
01:08 Types of Current
02:30 Root Mean Square (RMS)
03:58 Current is a Response
05:01 Complex Plane
06:18 Phasors
07:33 Phase Angle
08:19 Summary
09:05 Outro
09:29 Featured Comment
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Corrections:
04:22 Oops! The image there is a capacitor, not an inductor. My bad!
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*Side Note:* At 1:54, I say alternating voltage is used in our power grid because it's more efficient over long-distances. That's true because we can use transformers to raise the voltage up to the 100s of thousands. That drastic increase in voltage lowers the current by the same factor. Less current means less energy loss (P = I^2 R). Transformers don't work on direct voltage, so you're stuck with whatever voltage you originally generated. That voltage will have to be whatever is needed at the load (120V or 240V or 480V), not the 100s of thousands of volts that gives us good transmission efficiency.
why can’t you just transform dc to ac
@@official-obama We do with solar panels! Solar panels generate DC, so we have to convert them to AC before we can do anything with it. All the other energy sources generate AC, so there's no need.
I was going to complain.
Just to add: At the same voltage, just sending power over wires is more efficient with DC, ignoring the transformation steps. It's only worth it over long distances though.
Interesting that aside from obviously superconducting that very long distance DC power lines are the most efficient I guess for over 1,000 km for taking say wind or solar power to an area not getting enough sun or wind - I had the thought that I wonder if solar cell projects in remote locations are always better off never switching to AC power until the end of many kilometers of DC lines!?🤯🔋🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🌈🗽☮️💟⚡️
Also direct current (DC) isn't defined as being "steady," it's just that it is unidirectional (common misconception).
I'm 63 years old, and I want to be like Nick Lucid when I grow up.
I've been binging all of the old SA videos, and I've got to say: not only am I impressed with how good they are early on, but also with how much they've gotten even better. Nick can explain anything now!
Thanks! I work hard to improve myself and my work.
@@ScienceAsylum love your work
I agree.
This channel is an oasis in a desert world of misinformation
Totally agree! :)
I’m so glad you made this video. As a EE major, you made me feel 100% less insane.
Nothing but magic smoke and fire. Just keep it locked up and it's all good 😁
it's okay to be a little crazy
Same for me! xD
Why does it take faith
Less than Religion
I studied physics for years and today it was finally revealed to me WHY ohm is represented by omega. Everything makes so much more sense now.
OM
AyamThatayAm
@@NakedSageAstrology Dharmasticaly speaking.
I was never conscious of the spellings.
I was an electronic technician for 40 years and it never occurred to me that Ohms, named after an important early electrical researcher would be represented by Omega as a pun on the guys name.
A real OMeGa moment.
Wow, this explains it a lot more clearly than I ever got during my only electrical engineering course. I remember using formulas to calculate phasors and I had no idea what was going on. I've been with this channel from the beginning and it keeps getting better and better. Keep up the awesome work!
I'm glad y'all did. I watched this just because I know the cluster the explanations tend to be. This one didn't disappoint. I'm glad some can get it from this, never gonna knock a working method, but I already have my head around it and only loosely followed it in this presentation. "ELI the ICE man" is still the most straightforward way to remember all this. And of course the formulas lol
@@MadScientist267 Yep! I even put "ELI the ICE man" at the bottom of the screen at 7:18
@@ScienceAsylum Indeed lol this is one of those "throw all of it at the wall and see what sticks" deals 🤣
Bruh my lecturer only read the formulas
Yeah but he doesn't tell us whether this applies to the lattice or not.
Note: Multiplying the RMS value by sqr Root 2 (to get Peak Voltage) will only work properly for a sine wave.
Great topic! Thanks
And there are practical reasons why this matters. Some voltmeters measure true RMS while others just measure the peak voltage and assume it is sinusoidal to calculate the RMS voltage. If you have a harmonic-intensive load, you probably would want a true RMS voltmeter, rather than a standard voltmeter.
I appreciate that Star Trek Clone got so much screen time to make up for phaser disappointment :D
Also, the fact that it's Star Trek Day doesn't hurt.
@@ScienceAsylum he was wearing red. We'll never see him again. ☹️
@@duncanbarclay6919 that was just a clone.
@@duncanbarclay6919 Reminds me of "we need another Timmy"
I ask that you NEVER lose that human connection in your videos where you cut to yourself laughing at a joke or struggling to pronounce something, etc. It is essential to this channel :)
I LOVE that you add subtitles manually instead of relaying on TH-cam detection system. I'm not used to listen to english and sometimes is a bit hard for me to understand someone when talking at normal speed. Thank you, really.
Always.
Me taking a semester to understand RMS
Nick: explains it in like 15 seconds in the cleanest way possible
Man, I admire other YT channels for their depth of factual understanding.
I admire yours for your depth and clarity of hard to understand topics into simple analogies while keeping a fluent pace. You indeed justify your last name, Lucid
Keep it coming. From an Indian viewer.
Thanks! 🤓
8:20 They certainly make the math a LOT simpler -- it's _really_ convenient to be able to solve a comparatively simple algebra problem rather than a differential equation. I don't even remember exactly how phasors let us do that, but I remember being _really_ grateful for them in Circuits 1 last year. Euler's formula in general has _so many_ useful applications.
The one thing I don't like about bringing in complex numbers is that it's a giant pain to solve a system of equations with complex valued coefficients -- it's way less involved when there are only "real" numbers. But then if we didn't use them we'd just have to used vectors and rotation matrices instead, which are just a more complicated way of doing the same thing anyway. 🤷
Omg was this really uploaded one minute ago? I was about to get mad at myself for having missed one of your videos! Keep up the great work. I absolutely love hearing your explanations.
😆 Nope! You didn't miss it.
I’m in a trade school (HVAC) this really helped me understand how electricity works thank u professor X !!!!
It is certainly important for HVAC, those who don't understand are forced to stay with HVDC.
@@gubx42 I Dsee what you did there.
Yep. AC motors are classic inductive loads and require corrections to the load descriptions.
Well, well. I could have used this info 40+ years ago during my basic electronics training in the air force. Finally makes sense now! I've been living a lie all these years! Great job!
Glad I could help! 🤓 (even if it was late)
My mind is almost actually blown by having this stuff explained in such a simple way.
I simply love how he completely dresses up in star trek uniform for a 5sec shot, it makes these videos so enjoyable. And the topics are always interesting. Happy moment when a new vid releases or I find an old one I somehow haven’t seen yet
When I was little I would imagine that because alternate current is oscillating, the same electrons would be drifting back and forth in the wires around the same location for an eternity. I used to give names to the electrons in a little wire I had. I'd like to hear Nick's opinion on that XD
You are correct that the same electrons would (essentially) be in the same location forever. That's a lot of electrons to name though 😉
@@ScienceAsylum Thanks!
@@kakalimukherjee3297 That must have taken a long time to come up with 7.8x10^23 names
@@JustinL614 well let's get started. Joe. John. Hank.
One thing to consider is that independently of voltage, the free electrons undergo brownian motion (they are basically a gas) and thus drift over time in a random-walk-pattern.
that transition into the ad was smooth. You are probably the first channel where I didnt skip the ad
You know its a good Wednesday when you finish work and see a new video from Science Asylum released 12 seconds ago. Keep up the good work Nick.
I can't explain how excited I get when you upload a new video! Time to learn something new :)
09:09 - That segue was smooth as a cashmere codpiece :)
By far, the best video i found on youtube about this topic. Very intuitive simple explanation. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! 🤓
Now that I'm out of high school, I'm gonna send this to my physics teacher to show him how to explain phasors the right way 😈
Maybe he can show the video in his class.
I wouldn't say one way is right but whatever helps you understand it is good.
Phasors are pretty advanced for high school. You gotta get Eulers formula and have calc and strong trig under your belt to really get it.
This is college physics or electrical engineering..... without the knowledge of complex number and calculus this is pretty much useless.
@@organicfarm5524 I was introduced to phasors in a non-engineering physics class. No calculus required. There is a difference between introducing a concept and being able to do complex calculations with it. Nick does it well here and I bet a good fraction of his viewers are still in high school.
Wow this is the first time I've actually heard about how imaginary numbers are actually used in electronics!! Every other video I watched just skips over it alluding to it being too complex, but this makes so much sense, tysm!
Right?! It's not that complicated if you visualize it correctly.
@@ScienceAsylum no, imaginary numbers always makes it complex.
@@werefrogofassyria6609 Ba dum tish!
@Pramatha Kg Actually they do. Imaginary numbers do something really cool with lasers. Sorry, The Werefrog saw the whole thing with the calculations about 26 years ago, so the details are lost. It's just that the 4-cycle of imaginary numbers fit better than anything else.
i =i
i^2=-1
i^3=-i
i^4=1
Repeat
@Pramatha Kg Yes. They're very useful for modeling anything involving rotation or cyclical behavior.
Now I see real life usage of complex numbers. And I like it.
Great channel and video. As an EE grad from way back in 1995 it's been a while since I've heard the terms lag and lead wrt capacitance and inductance. Brought a smile to my face!
Having worked for two fortune 500 semiconductor companies and having earned most of an EE degree (went with CS at the end), I have never heard a clearer or more relatable explanation of AC power. The pithy additions about capacitors and inductors and their AC behavior are also the best I have seen, and somehow the video was even funny. In my opinion, you are the modern day Jaime Escalante.
Hey! thanks for mentioning Oliver Heaviside! the man deserves a lot of credit for all the great stuff he created and for giving EM theory the shape it have today!
Thank you very much for making this video, I really had the worst understanding of AC current, even though I have already studied phasors 2 years ago.
You always will have a special place in my heart.
Loved the clips of the laughter, felt more real. Keep up the great content, love all the great info!
You and my EE professor would get along. You both did a fantastic job explaining phasors! As much as that circuits class was a pain to be taken for my ME program, I really appreciated the material covered by the end of the class; AC circuits are awesome!
Thanks for making this video , I read ac current in school but didn't get most of it , your video explains a lot easier ❤️
you explain stuff as good as Feynman. And your explanation of this is even better than his in the easy pieces book. But that's probably because you had the benefit of animation which makes it way clearer.
4:28 I laughed out loud at that joke.
😂
Note: The circuit is RLC series circuit. Thus current through all circuit components is same. The voltage is divided among R,L & C whose phasors are explained very nicely.
Yes, I suppose I should have mentioned it was a series circuit. It's just the quintessential phasor example.
Thanks Mr. Science Asylum, for helping me actually like physics. Your content is amazing and sooo much fun! Thanks again!🙂
Thanks for ❤ing my comment!
Cool vid, as usual.
Just wanted to say I appreciated how straight forward your sponsored ad was. Ads that tell me something I might find useful exists... no bad in that.
Thanks! It's important to me that the sponsored segments aren't pushy.
Dude. I can't explain how thankful I am for your videos. My Electrical Engineering professor just threw phasors and complex numbers with no explanation and sure I could work with it, but it's sooo much nicer to understand WHY I'm working with it. I also really like how you give background too. Solid videos, thanks!!
Glad I could help! I enjoyed making this video. Phasor diagrams make so much more sense when you see them in motion.
I just wonder how much crazy a creator must be to put watermark "sponsor segment" in the video?
I would like to show my appreciation toward this degree of transparency.
These days this kind of craziness is rare somehow.
Thank you very much 😊
This video was much needed for me...because i wasn't able to understand the lead and lag thing....thanks again 🙃
Glad I could helped 🤓
You call your channel science asylum, yet you explain so well you make insane topics look sane
At this point a handful of the Asylum's videos can replace an entire physics semester.
Our physics teacher told students they are "phase shifted" when they took noticeable time to respond to a question. Now I know what she meant.
This is literally the topic that will be start in my next class tomorrow 😂. Thanks for the insight to it
I hope this helps 🤓
@@ScienceAsylum 🙂👍🏻
This was awesome! I love seeing a reason for Imaginary! The phasor diagram helped visualize what is going on really well
Happy to help 🤓
Wow, fantastic crisp explanation of very difficult concepts. Thank you1
Glad you enjoyed it! 🤓
Its funny how we make things complex only to make them simpler
This man just explained RMS in the easiest way to understand ever!
Always good stuff from the Science Asylum.
The way Nick laugh is pure wholesomeness.
Gotta love Star Trek clone on Star Trek day!
Poor Star Trek clone was soooo excited 🥺🥺🥺
Love the video as always. Has a real 3 Blue 1 Brown vibe with the complex number visualization. Great video! I learned a lot!
He does it again: A simple, straightforward, and understandable explanation of RMS. Taking what was a vague memory of having once understood the concept and solidifying it in my mind. Thanks very much.
also, some real fun can be had by trying out changing the phase of a current alternating in the audible frequency range. VCV Rack is free software that emulates eurorack synthesizer modules. There's oscilloscopes to watch the results as you listen!
I've never understood this, alternate current or whatever. I still don't.
The way he's explaining it is still a bit advanced. This imo is the simplest way of understanding it. Electricity like anything else needs a prime mover. In a DC circuit you have positive and negative. It's one direction. Electricity flows from positive to negative. Now AC is simply this.. switch the positive and the negative rapidly. A simple example of this would be to put a spinning magnet, so that the + and - flip very often. This is the frequency, how often something occurs, which in the USA is 60Hz (60x per second). What happens is the electrons gain the energy but instead of traveling in one direction they jiggle back and forth. The same amount of energy can be produced just in different ratios, with more uses and alot greater distances. There's alot more to it but without getting into the details or the math those are the basics. Furthermore by tweaking different values such as turning up the frequency we have discovered radio waves and more.
@@JustinL614
Thank you for your comment.
Thing is AC simply don't make no sense to me whereas DC makes sense. I've no idea why that is, though. And powerplants make electric power, AC electricity and transmit through the lines, thousands of miles away. And energy of electricity is used up. And and there're transformers in between. There's no physical direct connection. DC is simpler and makes sense. But AC? Don't know what but that just don't make no sense to me.
@@tTtt-ho3tq Do you know that electricity is transmitted at ~75% the speed of light, but electrons themselves are moving at a few millimeters each minute ? Current being DC or AC.
Energy is not transported by electrons. The energy is in the movement of the electrons.
The lightbulb goes on because billions of electrons are heating it up by their movement.
We need more Star Trek clone
I'll let him know you like him 😉
One of my fav channels! Thank you for the science sir.
You're welcome 🤓
Thank you for your time and work. I love the topics and the way you teach
Thanks! 🤓
Nick, you're killing it again!
Quality of explanation is still top notch, my brain always explodes in knowledge at the peak of every explanation given
this was absolutely amazing! you explain so so well and make it incredibly easy to understand! thank you for your hardwork
Thanks! 🤓
I've never feel bored watching your videos instead I feel interested and inspired.
Super helpful description of RMS voltage.
The graphics were AWESOME!!! Thank you.
Ollie also took Maxwell's 21 equations and 21 unknowns and produced the 4 equations we attribute to Maxwell.
Maxwell did the work, but Ollie made it beautiful.
This video is a Venn Diagram overlap between Science Asylum and Technology Connections, and I'm here for it.
Great video. The rotating vectors show how the addition of inductance (e.g.motor windings) creates larger peak voltage swings, and how power factor correction in industry (adding capacitance) cancels out that inductance
This explanation is so lucid! Where is your textbook available, Nick? You are the ultimate teacher! 😃
I think a good science explaining video is the one (like this one) in which I know nothing on the matter at all (or rather, find out I don't know nearly enough as I previously thought) and still watch the full video... kudos Nick, great as always
Thanks for the excellent video as always Nick ;). I'm currently doing master's in Electrical E. and really appreciate that people with such enthusiasm as you also like to share your knowledge with us! I have a suggestion: What about a take on seeing intuitively how impedance works in function of the frequency on a future video? After all, you already covered phasors XD
How impedance works as function of the frequency has been on my mind lately.
Awesome as always!
Wow, electricity is weird and surprisingly complex. For the first 6 minutes or so I was completely lost and was thinking this video was going to be a very rare dud where I left just as confused as when I started. But by the end I was grasping what you were putting out. So great work as usual and sorry for doubting you halfway through.
Great way to imagine. It sure helped me to view things in new perspective.
Wow! That was an amazing-beautiful explanation! As an Electrical Engineer (still wanting to study Physics btw xD) felt so well and easily explained, great job Nick! :)
Glad you enjoyed it 🤓
Amazing explanation, you're channel is awsome
Thanks! 🤓
Wow, you uploaded this around right when I'm studying about AC circuits. What a coincident! Thanks alot SA!
You're welcome 😉
Oliver does not get the love he deserves! A genius... Simplifying Maxwell's equation with multivariate calculus, relativistic electrodynamics (solving Maxwell's equations in motion), this... The man deserves better.
Of all the videos you have made so far, this one looked like the most fun one to make.
It was pretty fun.
@@ScienceAsylum i am glad. It turned out great.
Very nicely done, Nick.
Thinking of some particular set of 'rotating phasors' has become my mental model of what the Fourier decomposition of an arbitrary waveform produces.
Mathematically you determine all the phasors. Individually you get the 'fixed' length and frequency of each phasor, all presented in a 'snapshot taken at t=0' (which also shows the "initial" Angle of each phasor at said t=0 instant in time).
Generating the complex waveform from the determined set of phasors is then:
a) setup the t=0 diagram ;
b) now rotate each phasor through time according to its own frequency ;
c) then you can sum up the real/imag components, at any time instant to get actual real/imag values at that instant.
I like to think of each phasor arrow as spinning on some 'weird clock' where each phasor frequency is actioned by an appropriate 'gear ratio' existing between that phasor's 'output drive shaft' and the 'main input drive shaft', the latter having a handle attached that you can "hand crank in your own mind".
This made me subscribe. Awesome video!
Once in a question 220V AC vs DC I read that 220 volt AC can give shock equivalent to √2×220 volts when the voltage rises to max.
But it confused me so much that I stopped thinking about that. Now this got cleared.
Thanks a lot for giving such awesome videos for free.
Please do more videos about electrical components and their reaction to the electric current I love it
I gotta say, 0:59 - 1:12 is really well done both editing wise and acting wise.
Love your videos and you're hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed the topic, too. Fun stuff!
Glad you enjoyed it! 🤓 This topic was really important to me. I'm glad it's being received well.
As someone who next year is starting my degree in electrical engineering, and a fellow physics lover, this video was extremely useful and interesting! Thank you!
This managed to both explain things clearly, and also leave me with more questions than I started with.
Now I have to go and learn stuff, thanks a lot ;)
You're welcome 😉
Amazing vid as usual!
Euler's identity is really one of my favorites. As an Electrical Eng student, not only we use this to represent circuit's voltage and current as phasors but we also use this in fourier analysis and understanding solutions of linear differential equations representing harmonic system.
I'm trained as an army electrician, and this video nails it. A rotational diagram simplifies what has alway been tricky and complicated to keep track of. 👍
I met my wife in an electrical engineering collage lab, when she was explaining to me how to calculate phasors in 1976. That was about the time Star Wars came out with phase shifter effect on Darth Vader's voice.
That's fun! I'm glad you found her 🙂
Man I could not wrap my head around phasors until I watched this, 100% clearest video on how they work, great video.
Thankyou, cleared up a few things in my head!
Glad I could help 👍
I haven't watched this yet, but I just know I'm about to come out of this with a better understanding of phasors and I'm so excited about it.
I love you bro! I'm an electrician (2 years in school) This kind of video helps understand these very confusing concepts.
Glad I could help! 🤓
great video nick
It is so incredibly useful to know the purpose and method for RMS values. I am in school for electronics and they didn't even teach us that RMS is just a standard that doesn't encapsulate all the information, they just made us calculate it! Thank you so much!
Glad I could help 🤓
you explained the rms value so well and i used to struggle at it when in high school.
Glad I could help 🤓
Awesome as always