How do smoke alarms detect smoke? (part 1)
Chemistry For Your Life
00:00
The Amarecia's Smoke Detector
The atoms that are in the air become ionized. And they'll kind of nicely organize themselves and create a current running between those two positively charged plates. Now, when smoke particles start to move through the air and get into our smoke detector, they'll start to interact with those ions and disrupt those ions. If enough particles start to float in and it disrupts the flow and the current, the flow of electrons and the current in the smoke detector enough, the smoke detector recognizes that the current is shut off sort of like if you took the batteries out of something and it's not working anymore.
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