Insulators

Do you like physics? Have you heard what is an insulator and what it does? Simple, you can use an insulator to stop or separate the flow of electricity or heat to avoid getting through some point. How can you stop electricity? Insulators have highly joined valence electrons ( the one's that spin around the whole atom ) .

There are many kinds of insulators and they are made by different materials. For example there are electrical insulators, glass insulators, porcelain insulators, ceramic insulators between others. We have been using insulators since we started using the telephone lines. They used glass insulators has the one below:

The spiral hanging there is a modern example of what they used to be like. This insulators aren't so resistant so they couldn't make high-voltage transmissions. So eventually the spiral ones became useless when the suspension-type insulators came into the market.

Then right after the glass insulators the ceramic insulators came in. With this material, highly temperature insulation was possible because ceramic isn't a metal and it has a very high melting point it can stand temperatures that many metals couldn't resist. Ceramic is made with a very wide range of materials, and ceramic types like steatite ( this is used by broadcasting radio antenna ) , cordierite, alumina, zirconium, silicon carbide and others. Tubes of ceramic are cut into sheaths and used for insulation of terminals and connectors. Ceramic insulators are used in chemical and materials processing equipment, high-voltage power generation and transmission, radio frequency and microwave devices, foundry metal melting units and others.

There are heat insulators which are made with porcelain. This type of insulator prevents the formation of fires. But ceramic insulators are preferred over them since they are more useful.

The most common insulation is the electronic. Used everyday by home appliances like transformers, generators, and electric motors between others. There are many materials used for this like polyethylene, crosslinked polyethylene (either through electron beam processing or chemical crosslinking), PVC, rubber-like polymers, oil impregnated paper, Teflon, silicone, or modified ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE). Larger power cables may use compressed inorganic powder, depending on the application.

If we didn't use insulators the risks of having short-circuits and they prevent fires. You could think of insulators has condoms. They prevent everything you wouldn't want. Destruction of your life. Besides insulators have been used for decades and are one of the biggest industries out there. Insulation is something we use everyday. If you watch the room in where you are you will find all kinds of insulators. In front you there is a computer that has an electronic insulator. The telephone line providing internet to you is full of it since it's wire are made for electric insulation.

Has you can see you are surrounded by one of the greatest physics topics, insulation.

By: elbuo
Published: 06/10/08