--- title: Electricity at home: switches, plugs, fuses and alarms — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Electricity at home: switches, plugs, fuses and alarms», a lesson of the technology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Electricity reaches your home through a cable, passes the meter that counts it, and goes to the fuse box, which --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/) / Electricity at home: switches, plugs,… # Electricity at home: switches, plugs, fuses and alarms Lesson 14 of the technology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/technology/14-electricity-at-home/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/0/) — Electricity reaches your home through a cable, passes the meter that counts it, and goes to the fuse box, which sends it along hidden wires to every switch and socket. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/1/) — A switch is just a gate in a wire: flick it one way and the path is joined so electricity flows; flick it back and the path is broken. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/2/) — Mains electricity is strong enough to kill, so homes are full of guards: shutters inside sockets, fuses that melt, and switches in the fuse box that cut the power in a blink. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/3/) — Think of the evening at home: the lights come on, the Wi-Fi blinks, the smoke alarm sits quietly on the ceiling waiting, and all of it hangs on those hidden wires. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/4/) — The rules are short: hands dry, nothing into sockets, pull the plug not the cable, and anything broken or scorched is for an adult or an electrician. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/6/) — An LED bulb makes light from tiny crystals, with little heat, so it uses much less power and lasts years longer than an old glowing-wire bulb. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/7/) — A UK plug has three pins; the longer top one is the earth pin, which opens little shutters in the socket, and a UK plug has a fuse inside. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/8/) — A socket is the end of wires from the fuse box, and its shutters cover the holes until a plug's earth pin opens them. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/9/) — A fuse is a thin wire that melts if too much current (flow of electricity) flows, breaking the circuit (the loop of wire the electricity runs round) before the wires overheat; the number on it tells how many amps it allows. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/10/) — The fuse box, or consumer unit, has circuit breakers that switch off a circuit when too much current flows, and an RCD that switches off in about four hundredths of a second if electricity leaks, for example through a person. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/11/) — Only adults reset a trip, and if it keeps tripping, an electrician checks it. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/12/) — The electricity meter counts how much the home uses in kilowatt-hours, and a smart meter sends the reading automatically; a kettle uses more power than a whole room of LED lights. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/13/) — A smoke alarm senses smoke and beeps very loudly; a short chirp every so often means its battery is low, and it should be tested each month with its button; never take its battery out, but tell an adult to change it. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/14/) — A carbon monoxide alarm senses carbon monoxide, a poison gas with no colour, smell or taste that can come from badly burning boilers, fires or cookers. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/15/) — If the smoke alarm sounds for a real fire: get out, stay out, and call the fire brigade; if the carbon monoxide alarm beeps, get out and tell an adult to call for help. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/16/) — A Wi-Fi router is a small radio station that talks to your devices by radio and passes data along a cable to the internet; thick walls, mirrors and fish tanks can weaken the signal. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/17/) — A doorbell camera sends video over Wi-Fi to a phone when someone presses the button or moves nearby, but children still let an adult answer the door to strangers. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/14-electricity-at-home/18/) — Never touch switches with wet hands, never put anything into a socket, and hold the plug, not the cable, to pull it out. - ← previous: [Heating, water pipes and drains](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/13-heating-water-pipes-and-drains/) - next →: [Kitchen and garden dangers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/15-kitchen-and-garden-dangers/) - ↑ back to [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/)