Most students of electricity begin their study with what is known as direct current (DC), which is
electricity °owing in a constant direction, and/or possessing a voltage with constant polarity. DC
is the kind of electricity made by a battery (with de¯nite positive and negative terminals), or the
kind of charge generated by rubbing certain types of materials against each other.
As useful and as easy to understand as DC is, it is not the only kind" of electricity in use. Certain
sources of electricity (most notably, rotary electro-mechanical generators) naturally produce voltages
alternating in polarity, reversing positive and negative over time. Either as a voltage switching
polarity or as a current switching direction back and forth, this kind" of electricity is known as
Alternating Current (AC): Figure 1.1
Whereas the familiar battery symbol is used as a generic symbol for any DC voltage source, the
circle with the wavy line inside is the generic symbol for any AC voltage source.
One might wonder why anyone would bother with such a thing as AC. It is true that in some
cases AC holds no practical advantage over DC. In applications where electricity is used to dissipate
energy in the form of heat, the polarity or direction of current is irrelevant, so long as there is
enough voltage and current to the load to produce the desired heat (power dissipation). However,
with AC it is possible to build electric generators, motors and power distribution systems that are
far more e±cient than DC, and so we ¯nd AC used predominately across the world in high power