Displacement current

Displacement current is a big word used by scientists and engineers to explain a kind of "invisible" electric current that flows in things that don't conduct electricity, like air and plastic. Imagine you are playing with your toy car on a track with a big tunnel underneath. When the toy car goes through the tunnel, you cannot see it anymore, but you know it's still moving because you can hear and feel it.

Displacement current is like the toy car tunnel, it's invisible to our eyes, but it still exists and can cause things to happen, like making a light bulb turn on or powering your phone. It's a process that happens when an electric field changes, and is a part of a bigger process called electromagnetism.

To understand this, let's pretend you are a superhero with a special power of magnetism. You use your power to attract metal objects like paper clips and pins to the palm of your hand. Now let's imagine you hold a toothpick in your other hand. The toothpick is made of plastic, which is an insulator that doesn't conduct electricity. When you use your magnet power, the toothpick doesn't get attracted to your hand like the metal objects did, but something still happens.

A small amount of "invisible" current flows in the toothpick and creates an electric field around it. This "invisible" current is called displacement current. It's not a real current that moves like electricity through wires, but it's a way of describing how electrons behave in non-conductive materials when they are exposed to a changing electric field.

In summary, displacement current is an "invisible" current that flows in non-conductive materials when they are exposed to a changing electric field. It's a way of describing how electrons behave in materials that don't conduct electricity, and it's an important part of electromagnetism, which is how we can make things work with electricity.