💡 Home and electricity

You press a button on the remote, and it tells the TV what to do, like turn on or change the channel.

A vacuum has a strong fan inside that sucks up dust and crumbs. The fan spinning fast is what makes the loud sound.

You put clothes and soap inside, close the door, and the machine turns round and round to wash them clean.

An alarm clock beeps at the time someone chose, to help wake them up or remind them it is time to do something.

Inside every lightbulb or lamp, there is a tiny path for electricity to travel through, and flipping a switch either opens or closes that path like a tiny gate. When the gate is closed, electricity rushes through a tiny wire inside the bulb. The wire gets so hot that it starts to glow. In newer bulbs, the electricity lights up a tiny chip instead. That electricity comes from wires hidden inside your walls, connecting all the way back to where electricity is made.

A fridge is not really adding cold air, it is actually pulling heat out from inside and pushing that heat out the back, which is why the back of a fridge often feels warm. Inside the fridge walls, a special liquid travels around in a loop, soaking up heat from your food and carrying it away, over and over, all day and night. That steady cold keeps food fresh for longer, since germs that spoil food usually grow much slower in cold places.

A washing machine fills with water and soap, then spins and tumbles your clothes around and around, which rubs dirt and germs loose the same way scrubbing with your hands would. The soap grabs onto dirt and oil so it can rinse away easily, instead of sticking stubbornly back onto the fabric. After washing, the machine spins extremely fast to fling most of the water back out, which is why clothes come out much drier than when they went in.

A mirror has a super smooth, shiny surface that bounces light back in a very neat and orderly way, instead of scattering it messily like a wall or piece of paper does. When light bounces off you and then hits the mirror, it bounces straight back to your eyes in the same pattern, which your brain reads as a perfect picture of yourself. That is also why your reflection flips left and right, the light bounces straight back the way it came, reversing the direction it travels.