You watch the storm from the presumed safety of your home. And then--the big one hits. You know the kind. The one that you don't have any time to count to see how far away it is. With the flash of ghostly light and the deafening explosion of the thunder immediately overhead, your heart skips a beat. At the same moment, the lights in your home and throughout the neighborhood, flicker once, twice, and then suddenly you are in the dark. Aw! This is what you have been waiting for. Admit it. It is a thrill, an adventure.

You are without electricity. Cool, you say to yourself. That is, until you decide that it might be fun to pop some popcorn for the rest of the light show. Darn! No microwave. Oh, well, the lightening is still providing a free show with or without refreshments. Soon, however, the show is over. The storm has made its way to another town, continuing to provide a spectacular display of flashes, booms, and bangs for all those wishing to look to the skies. So what now? Maybe a little TV? Sorry the lights aren't on yet. Maybe a snack, you decide, so you grab the flashlight and head to the kitchen. As you reach for the door of the fridge, however, mom cuts you off saying, "Don't open the fridge and let all the cold air out. The food could spoil before the power is back on." So you point the flashlight down the hall and head for bed. When you reach the room, you automatically flip the light switch to turn on the lights. "Oh, yeah," you say to yourself, "no electricity." After a couple of hours of living in the dark, the thrill is over. The adventure has turned from entertaining to exhausting. Okay, you tell yourself before you drift to sleep, "let's hope the power is still out tomorrow and school is canceled."

The story above illustrates how much we depend on electricity in our homes. We take this source of energy so much for granted that when we have to temporarily do without it, it can alter our lifestyle dramatically.

Below are other examples of how much we depend on electricity.

On November 9, 1965, a major electrical failure turned the dark polluted skies of New York even darker. On this night, more than 30 million people were without electricity. For some, this blackout was just an inconvenience; for others it produced several hardships. For most the power failure was a reminder of our dependence on electricity.

Even more recently, in the winter of 1998, severe ice storms in the northeast part of the United States left thousands of people without power for more than ten days, causing severe hardships for those who were left without electric power. DO THIS! Describe what it would be like to live a day without electricity, or see how many electrical devices you could do without for 24 hours. Report on your experience. Use the Internet or go to the library and research the history of man's use of electricity. Make a time line of what you discovered.

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Created August 05, 1999 by Kathleen Ochsenbein