What is voltage?

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I’ve heard the definitions of it being “energy transferred per charge”, “potential difference”, and “the difference between the electrons in the positive and negative terminals of a battery” but I still don’t really understand some of these definitions, and can’t really wrap my head around what exactly is it.

I also don’t really get how it is the thing that can “power up” a circuit (I might have misunderstood this part” and how the definitions above can be the same thing

In: Physics

9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine a river of water flowing downhill. If you want to move the water uphill, it requires energy depending on how high the hill is. If you let the water flow downhill in a controlled way, you can extract work from it.

Voltage is for electric charge what hills and valleys are for mass. It makes charges in a given place want to move in a particular direction, and it takes work/energy to move a charge in the opposite direction.

It’s a little weird because there are negative charges that want to go uphill, but you can just imagine the landscape being upside-down for them

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