How to Use alternating current in a Sentence
alternating current
noun-
There's no snark, no alternating current of irony to undermine the earnestness of the plea.
—Philip Martin, Arkansas Online, 24 Nov. 2019
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The wave, in turn, causes an alternating current in the second wire.
—Bhaskar Krishnamachari, The Conversation, 12 Jan. 2021
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But clocks that measure time by that alternating current have been fooled by the drop in frequency.
—Valerie Hopkins and Richard PÉrez-PeÑa, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2018
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This is the charger that comes with the car that owners can plug into any 120-volt alternating current wall outlet.
—Dan Carney, Popular Science, 8 Jan. 2021
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Bowen and Blankson-Wood get the alternating current of the brothers’ connection just right.
—New York Times, 25 Jan. 2022
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The dizzying alternating current that defines a career in show business settled in to become the simple ebb and flow of our lives.
—Tony Goldwyn, Variety, 20 Oct. 2023
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The inverter also controls the speed of the motor by varying the frequency of the alternating current.
—IEEE Spectrum, 26 Mar. 2023
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During the night, workers cut a hole in the hotel's wall, dropped a cable four stories to the street below and then pulled the cable through a manhole to the New York Central Railway, which used alternating current.
—Judy Buchenot, Naperville Sun, 13 July 2018
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But the players maintained their assiduous fire, plugged into the alternating current of past and present.
—Matthew Guerrieri, Washington Post, 16 Dec. 2019
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One-legged, blade-shaped, and driven by an alternating current, this new robot moves with a cockroachlike bouncing motion at a speed of 20 body lengths per second (above).
—Kelly Mayes, Science | AAAS, 31 July 2019
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In this situation, one observes that an alternating current at frequency 2eV/ flows across the junction, where e is the charge of an electron and is the reduced Planck's constant.
—Frank Wilczek, Scientific American, 16 Oct. 2019
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The man was Nikola Tesla, inventor of the alternating current (AC) motor.
—National Geographic, 27 Sep. 2019
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But the trick to sending alternating current through the skin that is powerful enough to reach the spine, yet painless, is disguising it in the right overlapping frequency, or carrier wave.
—Max G. Levy, Wired, 29 Jan. 2021
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Still, alternating current back then did have one major downside — poor equipment.
—Sam Kean, Discover Magazine, 22 Oct. 2021
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The original plan called for the construction of two transmission lines, one alternating current and one direct current.
—Jake Frederico, The Arizona Republic, 29 Mar. 2023
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Also too perfunctory is the account of Edison’s role in persuading New York State to use alternating current in its first electric chair.
—Howard Schneider, National Review, 7 Nov. 2019
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To avoid large losses of power over long distances, the electricity must be converted from alternating current to direct current, and then back again at the other end.
—New York Times, 4 Jan. 2022
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The electricity that comes out of a wall outlet is an alternating current (AC) and needs to be converted to direct current (DC) to operate your devices.
—David Kender, USA TODAY, 27 Nov. 2019
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As the pendulum swings back and forth with the animal’s movement, the ring creates an alternating current in the coil—and a voltage-doubling circuit transforms it into direct current.
—IEEE Spectrum, 1 Nov. 2023
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The facility has a maximum net output of less than 1 megawatt (as measured in alternating current), 2.
—Lynn Mucenski Keck, Forbes, 2 Aug. 2022
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By switching on and off in a precise sequence, the transistors produce alternating current in three distinct phases, causing the car’s drive motor to rotate.
—IEEE Spectrum, 10 Jan. 2023
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The night before the event, the organizers realized that the hotel's electric supply was direct current and the ranges required alternating current.
—Judy Buchenot, Naperville Sun, 13 July 2018
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When someone plugs in a car to charge it, alternating current (AC) power is converted into direct current voltage, which is stored inside the car’s battery.
—Aarian Marshall Matt Simon, WIRED, 19 Sep. 2022
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Battery storage units store energy from the sun as alternating current power for later use.
—Corrinne Hess, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 29 Mar. 2022
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There are high voltage wiring systems, on-board chargers that convert alternating current power to direct current to charge the batteries.
—Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN, 6 Oct. 2023
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But connecting your car’s battery (and its direct current) to your house (which runs on alternating current) involves some extra equipment.
—Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2023
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In technical terms, power systems in Europe, and much of Asia and Africa, run on alternating current at 50 hertz, meaning that the flow of electricity changes directions 50 times per second.
—Valerie Hopkins and Richard PÉrez-PeÑa, New York Times, 8 Mar. 2018
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Applying the same specialized alternating current to the parietal cortex, farther back in the brain at a low frequency improved just their short-term memory.
—Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY, 23 Aug. 2022
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Tesla takes his ideas for an alternating current motor to Westinghouse, who is more receptive.
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Sep. 2017
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New York esthetician Joi Lin Tynes says high-frequency machines use an alternating current to produce heat, and the electrode emits argon gas—the orange light at the tip—which creates a germicidal response on the skin.
—Medea Giordano, Wired, 22 Oct. 2021
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'alternating current.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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