eli5: What is Voltage (Potential Difference)?

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I am currently talking IB Physics and I’ve read the textbook, watched yt vids and asked my teacher but my head can’t seem to wrap around the concept of voltage.

Joules per coulomb, like what? Energy per charge? For what? How do we get there and how is it useful?

Any help appreciated :).

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Someone used the reverse of this analogy for me, but if you had a pipe with water running through it, voltage is how fast the water is going, current is the amount of water going through it and resistance is the width of the pipe.

Another way to think of it would be like a waterfall. The voltage is how high up the waterfall is and the amount of water flowing is the current.

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