What do electrical transformers do?

Answer 1

Mr. V is correct. Transformers are probably one of the most common electrical devices used. They come in all shapes and sizes, the most common being the one on a pole outside your house to drop the distribution voltage down to the 120/240 volts found in your house to the small transformers that plug into a wall socket to charge your cell phone or power your modem. They do not change AC into DC as mentioned above. The device that does that is called a rectifier which is sometimes packaged with the wall socket plugin transformer if the required output is DC.

Answer 2

well the idea is that it is hard for the electric company to send high amperage power over long distance, the wire would have to be super thick. so they simply lower the amperage and raise the voltage. the cool thing is that it is still the same amount of power(watts) basicaly it is described as V * A = W
and yes, they use a transformer for that at the power plant. when it gets to a substation, they have large transformers that up the amperage and lower the voltage so it is safe for normal power lines. (the 500K or 500,000 volt lines can arc around 12 feet away but dont worry, those are the realy realy high tention lines.) perhaps around 30 to 10 thousand volts. when they get to your house they go through another transformer(the common ones on the poles or in those large green boxes in peoples yards. their goal is to transform the power from like 10KV to 120V and like 200 amps now im not positve if 10KV is the actual amount, but it would be some wholey crap amount of power. a little tip to the boys and girls out there, there is more than enough power on those lines to burn body parts off of you.(I have seen a guy who had both of his arms burned off when he touched a ground point with one hand and a regular telephone pole line with the other.)

Answer 3

I'm not exactly sure but I think that they ether increase or decrease or let the electricity remain the same but I don't know why anyone would want to change electricity I like it fine just the way it is.

Answer 4

Transformers do just that, transform your incoming supply voltage. All transformers can either step up voltage or step down voltage.

Answer 5

Downsteps the voltage from the generating station to a level that we are use to 120V & 240V AC.
Transformers can also change AC to DC as in a battery charger.

Answer 6

they transform electricity into nice shapes like balloons and elephants.

Answer 7

Many types & quality and functions.
Besides stepping up or down between voltages. They are also used to strengthen voltage between long footage, 250ft up. Limit noise reductions, shielding for better grounding, buckboost for motors, etc.