what’s the difference between current and voltage
In: 9
Hold your thumb over the end of the garden hose, blocking the water flow. Feel that pressure? That’s voltage. Take your thumb away. See the water flowing out? That’s current (amperage).
As already posted, the standard analogy is that current is the amount of flow and voltage is the “force” behind that flow.
Current is, if you were standing inside a wire, how many electrons would go past you every second. (An ampere is actually the number of *coulombs* of charge that go past you every second, but you can just as well think of it as electrons/second.)
Voltage is the average energy that those electrons have, so it tells you how difficult they’d be to hold back or stop.
Voltage is “how hard” the electricity is trying to move.
Current is how much is actually moving.
Say you have 10 volts, running through a 10 ohm resistor.
Current = Voltage/resistance = 10/10 = 1 amp
Now lets double the resistance, to 20 ohm.
Current= Voltage/resistance= 10/20 = 0.5 amp
You still have 10 volts, so the electricity is trying just as much, but it’s twice as hard for the electricity to go through, so only half as much actually gets through.
Current is how much charge is flowing past a point each second, voltage is how much potential that charge has to do work.
Power is voltage times current, so you can get the same amount of power with high voltage, low current – or high current, low voltage.
High voltage, low current means there isn’t a lot of charge, but it has lots of potential energy. High current, low voltage means there’s lots of charge with low potential energy. Same amount of power, two different ways to get there
Voltage is how strong electricity is here to affect something. Substraction between electric conracts. You may imagine two connected vessels. If level of water in one of them is higher, water could flow downwards. That difference could make some job.
Current is an amount of electricity (charge) which moves between electric poles. In our example it’s amount of water flowing between vessels in some period of time.
If you use water as an analogy to electricity, the pressure of water in a pipe is equivalent to the voltage, and the amout of water flowing through the pipe is equivalent to the current (amperage).
If you aim the output of the pipe at a water wheel you can use the force of the water to do turn the wheel and do something useful. If you have high pressure but a teenie little pipe, it’s not going to get much work done. If you have a big pipe but the water just dribbles out, it’s not going to get much work done. Mutltiplying the two is how you measure power (wattage).
Voltage is a force, it is an electric field, it is what “pushes” electrons thru a circuit. With no voltage diference, no current can flow, with higher voltages, more current can flow.
Current is how many electrons are being pushed by the voltage at any given point in a circuit.
So in terms of a water hose, Voltage is the pressure, and current would be how much water is flowing thru the hose.
The more gas in the gas can the faster it comes out: voltage (potential). The spout size is resistance. The stream of gas bring poured on the camp fire is current, the engulfing ball of fire your friends are recording is wattage.
Water and Electricity work very much the same way.
Amount of Charge = Amount of Water
Voltage is a difference in charge. So you got 2 water tanks, more water in one than the other.
The bigger the difference in the amount of water between the tanks, the bigger the voltage.
When you connect the 2 tanks, water flows from the higher tank to the lower tank, like when you connect 2 voltages, charge moves from the higher voltage to the lower voltage.
The amount of flow from one tank to the other is the current.
The current is controlled by the difference in the tanks AND the size of the pipe which connects them. The size of the pipe is like resistance in electricity. A large pipe is a low resistance, a small pipe a large resistance.
SO, you connect the 2 tanks. If you use a small pipe, since it has high resistance, the current (water flow) will be low. If you use a large pipe, since it has low resistance, the current (water flow) will be high.
This relationship is described with this EMF equation.
V=IR Voltage equals the Current times the Resistance or an alternative way to see it
I=V/R Current is the voltage divided by the resistance. With this format, you can see if the Resistance (pipe size) goes up, the current I, comes down.
Think of a water fall. Current is the amount of water flowing over the water fall. Voltage is the height of the water fall. You can have a small water fall at great height (i.e. tesla coil, high voltage, but very low current) or large amount of water falling over just a few feed (car battery- lots of current, low voltage)
Latest Answers