Blog 10: Electric Circuits

I was watching ESPN recently, and a commercial for a NASCAR race came on.  Although I had believed that the "sport" of NASCAR was simply left turns (which it technically is), I realized that it could be a very good analogy to an electric circuit.  Some car races are even called "circuits", so it made it even easier to connect it to an electric circuit.  The car represents the electron, and the person inside the car represents the energy.  The race track represents the wire, and the cars (electrons) travel along the "wire".  The resistance on the "wire" is the friction that wears the tires down, and also the width of the track.  When the track is slimmer, the cars cannot pass through that section of the circuit as easily.  The "battery" in this scenario would be the pit crew.  Because the pit crew makes repairs to worn down cars and replaces tires, it acts like a battery which gives the electrons more energy in order to continue to move along the circuit.  There is not really an "energy user" in this analogy, therefore a NASCAR race would be more like a short circuit, because there is not a significant amount of resistance.