Basic Concepts

Quantities o Charge o Current o Voltage o Power And Energy Kirchoff's Laws o KCL o KVL Circuit Diagrams & Symbols Signals o Introduction/Sines o Signal Features & Measurements
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Signal Experiments Measurements o Introduction o Voltage Voltmeters o Current (located in introductory lesson) o Frequency o Resistance o Oscilloscopes Circuits o An Introduction To Circuit Analysis o Nodal Analysis o Mathematical Background
Determinants Matrix-Vector Multiplication

A Note on Sampling Signals (Nyquist Limit)

Fourier Series o Basic Fourier Series o Numerical Computation (Intro to FFT) o An Observation About Fourier Series Frequency Response

o o

Introduction Frequency Response Laboratories

Charge

Why Do You Need To Know About Charge?

Goals For This Lesson

Forces Between Charge Using Charge

You are at: Basic Concepts - Quantities - Charge Return to Table of Contents

Charge In this lesson you're going to learn about charge. Before we start, here's a quick question for you. Q1 Have you ever used charge? Click on your answer. You are using charge now, believe it or not.

These lessons have been designed to be read electronically, not on paper. To read them electronically means using a monitor. A monitor uses charge to make the screen emit light of various colors, and to control that light so that it forms letters and windows, etc.

To produce the light that the monitor emits, and to control the appearance of that light, voltage is used to control the path of charge that is emitted at the back of the monitor and which strikes the monitor screen.

A caveat! If you are reading this lesson using a flat panel display, then these statements are not true. In that case imagine that you are using a CRT monitor.

Here is a little pictorial model of what happens. Click the appropriate phrase to show how the electrons (which carry charge!) move up, move down, or travel a flat path. Note the following: o When there is positive charge on the top plate there is also negative charge on the bottom plate. The electron is simultaneously attracted to the positive charge and repelled by the negative charge. o The same attraction/repulsion is obtained when the charges are reversed.

Here is what happens.

When you want a dot in the top portion of the screen you put positive charge on the top plate and negative charge on the bottom plate, and the positive charge attracts the electrons and the negative charge repels the electrons as they fly by so they hit the screen above the center. When you want a dot in the bottom portion of the screen you put a positive charge on the top plate and a negative charge on the top plate to repel the electrons, moving them lower. With no charge on the plates, the electron travels a flat path. Here are a few questions for you to answer.

Q2 If there is more positive charge on the top plate, which way will the charge move? Q3 If the moving charge is positive, which way will it move compared to the direction the electron moves? Don't get the idea that monitors are the only devices that use charge. Let's review a few other places where you may have used charge.

You may have spoken of charging your car battery - or charging any other re- chargeable battery. Charging a battery is doing exactly what the phrase says. When you charge a battery you are putting charge into your battery, and the battery stores the charge for later use. When you discharge that battery you are also using charge. Charge flows through the devices you attach to your battery - the lights in your car, the electronics that control your car, the CD player you put the charged batteries into, etc.

You use charge all the time. You may not think about it much, but you do. Here are some examples of times when you use charge.

Every time you run electronic gear - a TV, a stereo, a computer from an AC wall plug outlet, you use a device called a power supply that stores charge in a capacitor. That stored charge allows the electronic circuits you use to run during the very short times when the AC voltage goes through zero - and it does that 120 times a second on a 60hz power line. You not only use charge, but charge should be feared - at times. When clouds get charged they can discharge by producing large lightning bolts that are very destructive. Charge affects everything!

When there's a solar flare, the sun emits a stream of charged particles that pour down on the earth at a million miles per hour. A flare can disrupt satellite communications affecting the whole world. Comets have a tail of charged particles and provide one of the most awesome sights in the heavens.

What Do You Need To Learn About Charge?

There are many things that you might need to know about charge. Here is a partial list.

Two charges can interact and produce forces on each other. That effect is used when we deflect a stream of electrons to produce spots at different points on a monitor screen. The same process occurs in ink-jet printers. You need to learn about forces between charges. You need to learn about how charge flows. Remember, it flowed into the battery and out of the battery. Charge flow is important. You will need to learn about units for charge and charge flow, and you will need to learn about charge related energy concepts like voltage.

Goals For This Lesson This lesson introduces you to some simple concepts about charge. At the end of the lesson, you want to be able to do the following.
Given a question involving charge Be able to compute amounts of charge. Be able to predict how charge moves - when charges attract and when they repel.

Forces Between Charges & Facts About Charge In this section you will begin by learning about charge - a basic electrical quantity. We start with a short discussion of the force between charges.

Classical Greeks were the first to note that small pieces of material were attracted to rubbed amber. That's the first recorded instance of an observation of force due to charge. You have seen electrical effects if you have noticed the attraction of small bits of paper to a recently used comb.

Those effects are evidence of a force that exists - a force that is not a gravitational force. That force is one of the fundamental forces of nature, and, along with gravity, it is one of the two forces that we humans can experience directly.

These tiny effects have gradually been studied and put to use, especially in the last century and a half. Starting from observing these tiny effects, scientists and engineers have learned basic principles and discovered other electrical effects that have led to the industries we rely on today including the power industry, the electronic communication industry and the whole world of computers. The effects these forces have in the world are no longer tiny. The major moving forces in society - the ability to communicate instantaneously and the ability to compute solutions to large problems are directly attributable to what we know about electricity. And, what we know about electricity starts with charge - the invisible quantity that produces electrical forces.

There are two large forces that we can experience - gravitational forces and electromagnetic forces. Both of these forces act through space, sometimes over large distances. Gravitational effects cause the moon and planets to take elliptical orbits around a larger body. Mass causes this gravitational attraction. However, no one can give you a really good explanation of exactly what mass is except to say that it is a property of matter that causes this gravitational attraction. But, there is another force.

Some particles exhibit non-gravitational forces between them; forces that are much larger than gravitational forces. Not all particles experience this force, but those that do are said to possess a property called charge.

Force due to charge obeys an inverse square law, of exactly the same form as the gravitational force. Again, charge, like mass, is perhaps ultimately unexplainable, but some bodies possess it and are said to be "charged".

The force law for charges is somewhat different because charge comes in two different types, positive and negative charge.

Two like charges (two positive charges or two negative charges) will repel each other, whereas two masses always attract each other. This interactive demo gives an idea of how two unlike charges move.

The force law for charge is similar to the gravitational force law. For two charges, q1 and q2, the force between them is:

Proportional to the product of the two charges q1 and q2, and Inversely proportional to the square of the distance, r (in meters), between them. So, the force is given by an expression:

F1,2 = q1 q2/(4o r2) Here, o is a fundamental constant of nature, = ~8.885419x10-12 F/m. Like every other physical quantity, when you deal with charge you must account for units.

Charge is measured in coulombs.

Coulombs are named after Charles Augustin Coulomb who was the first person to determine that the force law for charges was an inverse square law. Charge not only comes in two varieties, it also comes in discrete sizes. Electrons and protons each have the same size charge (but of opposite polarity) of magnitude 1.6x 10-19 coulombs (+ or - as appropriate), where a coulomb is the MKS unit of charge. Note, the electron's charge is usually counted as negative, and the proton's charge as positive, although that is only a convention and there is no "lack" or "surplus" associated with negative and positive charges.

When you use the force law expression: F1,2 = q1 q2/(4o r2)

Charge is measured in couloumbs (for q1 and q2). Force is measured in newtons (for F1,2 ). Distance is measured in meters (for r).

Problem P1 How many electrons does it take to produce -1 coulomb of charge?

Remember that the charge on one electron is -1.6x 10-19 couloumbs, so you just need to pile up enough electrons to get one couloumb.

Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. To enter your answer click here.

When you enter your number use a power of ten format. For example, if you determine that you need 1.6x 1015 electrons, then you would type:16E14 since that is the same as 1.6x 1015 = 16x 1014. Your grade is:

Consider this. If charge obeys an inverse square law it obeys a force law just like the gravitational force law. The gravitational force law depends inversely upon the square of the distance between two masses, so mass plays a role somewhat similar to the role charge plays in the force law. Because of the similarity between the laws there are going to be some concepts that work the same in both cases. There will also be some differences. Two positive charges repel each other whereas two masses attract each other. Charge comes in two varieties that we call positive and negative. We don't know that that happens for masses. Anti-matter probably does not have negative mass, although it interacts with matter explosively. It doesn't look like two masses could repel each other. The possibility of attraction and repulsion makes charge unique. Questions If the force law between charged particles is the same as the force law between two masses, then what phenomena of gravitiation fields would you expect to be the same for charged particles? Q4 The concepts of potential energy would be the same.

Q5 Just like two masses - like the earth and the moon - can orbit each other, charges can orbit each other.

Q6 Just like mass, charge is always positive.

Q7 Just like every particle has mass, every particle has charge.

Q8 Just like mass, two charged particles always attract each other.

There's one last set of facts about charge that you should know.

The charge on an electron is always the same. It's has exactly the same value for every electron in the universe. The proton has the same absolute value of charge as the electron, but it has a positive charge, not negative. If you have just one electron and one proton (a hydrogen atom perhaps) then you have no net charge. The two charges cancel! And, they cancel exactly! Other fundamental particles also have exactly the same charge as an electron, although it can be either positive or negative. The charge on an electron is a fundamental quantity - a constant of nature.

Where Do You Use Charge? You may be tempted to think that charge is somewhat obscure and that you don't ever use charge. You're wrong. You use charge constantly, and you buy lots of things that store charge.

When you plug an electrical device into a wall plug you use charget. One example is a light bulb. Charge flows from the wall plug, through the connecting wire and through the bulb. In the process, the flowing charge heats up the filament in the bulb generating light - unless it is a fluorescent lamp, and then a different process creates the light. Actually, when charge flows it is called current. Click here to go to the lesson on current. If you own a car, you own a storage battery. The battery stores enough energy to allow you to start your car. The battery stores

energy by storing charge on the battery plates. When you use the battery, charge flows out of the battery. That's current flowing from the battery. Actually, when you buy a battery for a toy, a radio, a CD player, etc., you are buying stored energy, and the energy is stored as charge with potential energy. Batteries discharge (lose their charge) and some can be recharged (You can put charge back into them.). Every time you run electronic gear - a TV, a stereo, a computer from a wall plug outlet, you use a device called a power supply that stores charge in a capacitor. That stored charge allows the electronic circuits you use to run during the very short times when the AC voltage goes through zero - and it does that 120 times a second on a 60hz power line.

There is some late breaking news

Recently physicists have discovered more basic entities, quarks, that may have one third of the charge of an electron. Again, it is exactly one third, and charge always comes in multiples of that quantity. Quarks come in groups that have no net charge, and form some of the fundamental particles like protons and neutrons. For those atomic particles charge always comes in integral multiples of the charge on an electron, or they have no net charge at all! In this lesson you have started to learn about charge, a basic

electrical quantity. However, charge in motion - charge flowing through a wire for example - is current, and that is something else you need to learn about. Click here to go to the lesson on current. If you want to go directly to the lesson on voltage, click here.

Current

Why Do You Need To Know About Current?

Facts About Current Current Current Units Measuring Current Problem & Links to Other Lessons
You are at: Basic Concepts - Quantities - Current Return to Table of Contents

Current Like people, the most interesting charge is the charge that is in motion, moving about rather than sitting still.

Charge in motion is referred to as current.

Current can exist in many different physical forms because there are many different physical situations in which charge can flow. The most common manifestation of charge in motion is the movement of electrons in a wire such as the wire leading to the computer that is running this lesson. That's one form of current. Here's a simulation that lets you see how charge flows around an electrical circuit through several elements. Click the green button to see that. However, ions in water carry charge and a current can flow in water with ions in solution. Standing in distilled (ion-free) water near an electrical outlet in your bathroom is nowhere near as dangerous as standing in tap water with some ionic content, but do not try the experiment. Charged particles moving in a vacuum are another manifestation of current, and you experience that every time you watch television or look at a computer screen. Charged particles fly from an electron gun at the back of a picture tube or a monitor tube, strike the screen and you see the light emitted from the screen as a picture.

Even ink-jet printers charge the ink blobs in the jet, and the jet is an example of a current!

Goals For This Lesson There are lots of different forms of current, and you need to understand current - the flow of charge if you want to understand the electrical devices you use. Objectives for this system include the following:
For yourself To develop a mental model that helps you picture and understand current in an electrical circuit. In an electrical circuit Be able to define and measure currents in any element. Be able to use units of current correctly.

Current - continued There are a number of different ways of thinking about current. In different situations you might want to use different ways of thinking about current to help you figure out what's going on. Water flowing in a pipe is analogous to current. The water flows in the interior of the pipe, and current actually flows through the empty spaces between atoms in a wire, but the analogy can be useful. It helps if you have some sort of analogy that lets you use something you already know about to help you think about new things like current. Current is an information carrying signal. There will be times when you don't care so much about the charge that's being transported as current flows but you will care about the information that is being sent using current.

There will be times when the charge that is being transported is what is important, and there are times when you will have to think in a backwards sort of way about that. Semiconductor engineers do this all the time when they talk about holes moving in semiconductors. They have invented a concept that is based on missing electrons and the spaces they should occupy in an atomic lattice, and they work with ideas of missing electrons - holes - that move about in semiconductors.

Most of the time, when you are dealing with current you are dealing with electrons moving through metallic wires of electronic devices. At this point, we will begin discussing electron flow through wires. Current usually flows through wires, and electrical engineers usually idealize the situation. The figure below shows a wire carrying current, and the idealized representation we use - the arrow that points in the direction the current flows. Note that the current in the idealization is symbolized by an arrow along the idealized wire, and the arrow points in the direction that positive charge flows.

In fact, electrons are flowing the opposite way, but we imagine current as a flow of positive charge. We want to emphasize the concept of current as a through variable. Whenever we speak of current we specify the area that it flows

through. The figure below shows a current flowing through a rectangular cross section wire.

If we imagine the wire split in the middle (along the divider shown) then the current is split between these areas. If the total current is twelve amperes, then six amperes will probably flow through each half of the rectangular wire. That's shown below.

Later, when we consider electrical elements - like resistors - we will want to consider elements in parallel, and you will need to understand this situation. If the two halves of the conductor above are considered to be resistors, then they are in parallel in the picture above. We could connect something at either end of the conductors and current would

split entering the parallel conductors, and could come together when exiting the parallel conductors. Current - continued Current is charge in motion. To be more precise, consider the situation below. If we imagine "slicing" the wire, we can then count the rate at which charge flows through the slice. That's shown with the slice and arrow below.

Hopefully, it is clear that the flow rate of charge through the slice is measured in couloumbs/second. However, couloumbs/second has another name, amperes. Current is usually measured in amperes (really coulombs/second!). So, to measure the current passing through the wire, you can "sit" on the dark gray slice and watch charge (coulombs) move past the slice, count the coulombs that pass in a give amount of time, then divide the number of coulombs by the time interval to compute the current. Problems 1. Now, here's a question for you. Let's imagine that you have a wire, and you somehow observe that 2 coulombs passes through the wire in one second. Click on the button you think gives the value of the current.

2. You observe charge going through a wire for 4 seconds, and you find that 20 coulombs passes. What is the current? Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: Now, if you reallly understand what current is you can turn this around. In the problems above you were given the charge passing through a wire in a given amount of time. Turning that around we can ask a different question. If we have a constant current, I, flowing through a wire, then we can compute how much charge flows through the wire in some given time interval. Say we have the following situation: I = Current = 3.2 amperes Time interval = 15 seconds. Then we would know that the amount of charge that flowed through the wire in the 15 second time interval would be: Total charge = 3.2 amperes x 15 seconds = (3.2 coul/sec) x 15 sec = 48 couloumbs Problem 3. Here's a problem for you. You have a car battery, and you leave on an interior light. The light draws one ampere from the battery. How many couloumbs will flow through the light if you leave it on for three hours?

Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: Comments on the Problem If you think about the problem above you see that a couloumb is a pretty small amount of charge. For example, the car battery can probably supply one ampere for somewhere between 50 and 100 hours. That's a lot of couloumbs! Manufacturers who make car batteries use other units of charge. Since: Charge = Current x Time Interval we can use other units. For example, the time interval can be measured in hours. Then, instead of couloumbs we would measure charge in units ofampere-hours. Electrical engineers don't use that unit often, but battery manufacturers use it all the time. A car battery that can provide one ampere for 80 hours is rated at 80 ampere-hours. Of course, it can also provide 80 amperes for one hour. Problem 4. Here's another problem for you. How many couloumbs are there in one ampere-hour? Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: 5. Here's still another problem for you. You have a 50 ampere hour battery. How many couloumbs of charge are stored in the battery if it is fully charged? Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: 6. Here's one more problem with the same battery as you saw above. You have a 50 ampere hour battery. If you draw a constant half ampere (0.5 ampere) from the battery, how long will it continue to supply current? Give your answer in hours. Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: 7. Here's one more problem with the same battery. If you have a trickle charger that can supply 200 milliamps, how long will it take you to charge the battery fully? Give your answer in hours. Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: Is that a reasonable time? 8. Here's another problem with the same battery. If you have a a device that draws one ampere and it comes on for ten minutes in each hour, how long (in hours) will the battery supply current for your device? It's important to know this because your device is measuring weather data on a mountain top, and in deep snow, so you need to know how long it will last. Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: 9. Here's the last problem with that battery. Shown below is the current drawn by a device. How long (in hours) will the battery supply current for this device?

Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: Facts About Current - Units There is one last point you need to know.

Current - like every other physical variable - has units. Current is really charge flow, so the units for current are in terms of charge/time. In the MKS system that is: Current units = charge/time = couloumbs/sec = amperes.

The most commonly used unit it the ampere, and it is often referred to as amps. If we have a current of 3.5 amperes, we would say: I = 3.5 amp or I = 3.5A Facts About Current - Polarity When you have a circuit and you want to figure out how the circuit will behave you will generally try to determine what the currents and voltages in the circuit are going to be. That prediction is what you want. However, before you can calculate a current you need to have a precise definition of what you mean by the current, and that's where you get involved with polarity. We will introduce the idea of polarity with a question for you to answer. Question Q1. In this circuit, Willy Nilly wants to determine current I5. He has defined that current as shown below at the left. Is that the correct definition of the current? Or is the current definition at the right the

correct one? (Note, depending on visual space in your browser, the right one may display below the left one so the buttons are labelled Left/Top and Right/Bottom.)

The point to the question above, is that when you are analyzing a circuit, the way current polarity is defined is entirely up to the person who is analyzing the circuit. (That's unless your instructor asks you to use a particular polarity, or a textbook problem defines the polarity for you.) Polarity definitions are arbitrary. Make sure that you always are clear about how you define polarity - both for current and for voltage. Otherwise, you may work a problem and find I5 = 7A, and someone else may find -7A. You could have a long argument only to find out that you and the other person defined polarities differently.

Facts About Current - Summary Let's review things a bit.

Like water flowing in a pipe, current flows in a wire. Just as the water in the pipe is confined to the pipe, the charge flowing in a wire is confined to the wire. It can't get away, and stays within the wire surface. Like water flowing in a pipe, charge has to go somewhere. So, in fact, it flows through electrical devices, going in one terminal and out another. When current flows for a time charge flows. Current is the rate of flow of charge, so you can determine how much charge flows from the current and the time it flows when the current is constant.

Measuring Current Current flows through something. Current can flow through a wire, the normal situation, but it can also flow through an ionic solution, through the ground, and many other things. The important word here is through. Current is a through variable. Current always flows through something. What this means is that in order to measure current you need to get the current to go through a meter. An ammeter is the type of meter used to measure current. In this section we'll talk about measurement of current and using ammeters. Here's a diagram of a circuit with an ammeter inserted to measure a current. There are many different currents flowing in this circuit. We are interested in current I?, which flows through element 3. We want to measure current I?. (We call it I? because that's the one we want to know.)

Now, if we want to measure that current, we have to get it to flow through through an ammeter - a device that measures current. The way we do that is to break the circuit between element 3 and element 4 and insert an ammeter in series with element 3. We say that two elements are in series whenever the current that goes through one element is forced to go through a second element. Note that all of the current going through the first element (element 3 here) goes through the second element (the ammeter here). Here's a circuit diagram that shows where the ammeter goes.

The important thing here is to see how the ammeter is inserted so that the current you want to measure is made to flow through the ammeter. When that current flows, the ammeter will measure the current. Here, current I? flows through the ammeter after flowing through element 3 and before flowing into element 4. Here's a pictorial representation of an analog ammeter. It's typical of ammeters. It has two terminals. They are usually red and black. When you have one red terminal and one black terminal, you can be sure that the ammeter will read a current like the one defined in the picture. When the current, I, shown in the figure, is positive, then the ammeter needle will read upscale indicating the measured current.

Now, here's a representation of a digital ammeter. It's going to have the same kind of terminals. The difference here is that it will give a digital value for the measurement, showing the measurement result with an LED display.

There's nothing very complicated about measuring current. You need to get the current you want to measure to flow through an ammeter which will then measure the current. In principle it's pretty simple. Problem 10. Here is the same circuit where we introduced you to the ammeter. We kept the ammeter in the same place.

We placed the ammeter there in order to measure the current through element 3.

Does the ammeter also measure the current through element 4?

Does the ammeter also measure the current through element 1?

A Note On The Discrete Nature Of Charge There's one other item to consider. Charge comes in discrete packets but it is often useful to assume that it can take on continuous values. That lets us bring all the power of calculus to bear when we discuss current. Current is the flow of charge, and it is thought of in terms of a quantity of charge flowing through an area in some small amount of time. However, we often want to drive that concept to the limit, by imagining a current at an instant. Then, we imagine letting the time interval shrink to zero so that we think of current as a derivative: i(t) = dQ(t)/dt We do realize through all of this that charge comes in discrete packets, and that this limit is ultimately mathematical nonsense. Still, the charge of an electron is so small that we can think in these terms in most practical situations. When we consider more complex circuits it will be helpful if we think, however, in terms of charge that can take on continuous values. Using Current - Where Do You Use Current? sort.

You use current every time you use an electrical appliance of any If you own a car, you own a storage battery. The battery stores enough energy to allow you to start your car. The battery stores energy by storing charge on the battery plates. When you use the battery, charge flows out of the battery. That's current flowing from the battery. When you plug an electrical device into a wall plug you use current. One example is a light bulb. Current flows from the wall plug, through the connecting wire and through the bulb. In the

process, the current heats up the filament in the bulb generating light - unless it is a fluorescent lamp, and then a different process creates the light. What if the Current isn't Electrons in a Wire? The most common kind of current you will see will be electrons flowing in a wire. That's what you'll see 99% of the time. However, any time any form of charge flows, that's a current. Here are a few examples of currents. Current - a flow of charge - is what happens when you have any of the following, and it is not an exclusive list!

Ions in motion in water - What would happen if you managed to connect an electrical outlet to a sink full of water. Ions, however, also move in car batteries and electroplating solutions. Charged blobs of ink in an ink-jet printer. Electrons moving through space - For example, the electrons striking the computer screen to generate the picture seen as this is written on a computer.

Voltage

Why Do You Need To Know About Voltage? Voltage Measuring Voltage Problems
You are at: Basic Concepts - Quantities - Voltage Return to Table of Contents

Voltage We usually try to start each lesson by giving reasons why you want to learn the lesson topic. However, if you have ever had the misfortune of grabbing a live wire with more than a few volts you might already have

the answer to why you want to learn about voltage. You've probably seen the signs that say "Danger High Voltage", and you've probably talked about things or people being "High Voltage". A high voltage individual is one with a lot of energy and drive. That's apropos. Still voltage is important - and not just to electrical engineers because it is the medium used to transmit information and energy in our world. Goals Here are the objectives for this lesson.
Given an electrical circuit: Be able to define voltages for elements within the circuit, Be able to measure voltages for elements within the circuit.

What Is Voltage? - Ways Of Thinking About Voltage Voltage is a physical variable that can be thought of in different ways. Here are a few ways you can think about voltage.

Voltage can be thought of as the driving force (although it is not really a "force".) behind current. Things like batteries are voltage sources. The voltage across the terminals of a battery tends to stay pretty constant. When you connect a device across the battery terminals a current flows through the device. Current flows through electrical elements when a voltage appears across the terminals of the element, just like water flows through a pipe when a pressure difference appears across the pipe. You can use that analogy to get started thinking about voltage. More ways of thinking about voltage are:

Voltage is an across variable (Whereas current is a through variable, remember?). Water pressure that causes water flow is

also an across variable. We talk about pressure differences and voltage differences. Voltage is a concept that is related to potential energy. Voltage is the electrical potential energy a charge has by virtue of its position in space. Where the charge is affects the energy it has because other charges exert forces on it. When forces are exerted on the charge, then it may require energy to move the charge between two points, or, conversely, the system may release energy as the charge moves between two points.

Because there are electrical forces there are concepts like potential energy that can be used in electrical systems. What's more, the electrical forces obey an inverse square law, just like gravitational forces, so a lot of concepts carry over. Those gravitational force field concepts are important. Electrical fields have much in common with gravitational fields, and a number of those concepts carry over to electrical fields. The electrical force law and the gravitational are both inverse square laws. Because the fundamental force law is the same, many of the concepts developed for gravitational forces can be taken over to electrical concepts because the underlying mathematics is the same. Those electrical concepts will be almost exactly the same except that charge will play the role in electrical forces that mass plays in gravitational forces. Here are some of the important ideas that carry over.

Potential energy that is a function only of position is a direct result of the inverse square force law. Both gravitational masses and electrical charges obey an inverse square law. Potential energy can be converted into other forms of energy. In a gravitational field, masses can fall together (due to mutual attraction) and the potential energy can be converted to heat and kinetic energy. A mass can acquire kinetic energy in an gravitational field and later that kinetic energy could be converted to heat. Charges attached

to masses can acquire energy in an eletrical field, and that kinetic energy can be converted to heat. The many concepts that carry over from gravitational systems help to make voltage a much richer concept. Think of some of the implications.

If you pull two masses apart (by lifting a weight to a higher position on the earth, for example) you put potential energy into the system. If you pull two attracting charges apart you put potential energy into the system. That potential energy can be converted into other forms of energy. If you have a charge with potential energy, you can generate light, heat, mechanical motion and you can even store chemical energy.

Voltage Concepts In electrical fields, we will want to think in terms of the potential energy per unit of charge. Near the earth's surface the potential energy of a mass, m, h meters above the surface is mgh. The potential energy per unit mass is just gh. Voltage is the potential energy per unit charge for a charge in an electrical force field. There are consequences of the inverse square law for electrical forces. Generally, those consequences are similar to what happens in gravitational systems.

In an electrical field, or in any conservative field like a gravitational field, we will have to do the same amount of work to move the charge between any two points A and B, no matter what path we take in moving the charge. Work done in a conservative field is said to be "path independent". The potential energy in a gravitational field and the voltage in an electrical field (potential energy per unit of charge) are functions of position only.

One important consequence is a relationship between energy put into a charge as it moves.

If we move a charge from point A to point B, and put a given number of joules of work into the charge, we will recover exactly the same number of joules from the charge if it moves back from point B to point A. If we move the charge through any closed path or circuit, there will be no net energy input to the system and no net energy recovered from the charge. If we move a charge from point A to point B, the number of joules of work we put into the charge can be calculated by multiplying the charge, Q, by the voltage difference between points A and B, Vab.

Problem P1 What are the units of voltage in the MKS system? Remember, that voltage is potential energy per unit of charge.

We can draw a number of analogies between voltage and gravitational potential energy. Consider the circuit below. The element shown in yellow "pumps" charge from a lower potential - the bottom terminal of the yellow element, to a higher voltage (potential energy per unit charge, remember?) at the top of the yellow element. That's like lifting a weight from a low position (a position with lower potential energy) to a higher position (one with more potential energy). Click to button to see what happens as the charge moves around the circuit. Problem

P2 The yellow element in the simulation above adds energy to the charge. What kind of element could do that?

There's a point to the simulation above. A battery, or any other voltage source, is a sort of charge pump. If you buy a battery and you connect something to it, it will supply charge at some specified voltage to your applied electrical load. If the charge is pumped up to nine (9) or twelve (12) volts, for example, then when you connect a load to your battery charge will flow out of your battery, through the load. Energy will be transferred to your applied load from the battery. What happens in this situation with regard to the energy involved? When the charge goes through the battery, and is "pumped" up to, say, twelve (12) volts it acquires potential energy. As it flows through the load it gives up this potential energy to the load. If the load is a motor that energy might be transformed into mechanical energy, potential (by lifting a weight) or kinetic (by turning a flywheel). If the load is a light bulb, the energy is transformed into light and heat. Here's a simple circuit. A battery (remember the special symbol for a battery) is connected to two elements in series. Charge/current flows out of the battery, through element "1", out of element "1", into element "2" and out of element "2" back into the battery. As the charge flows through the battery it acquires energy. Some of that energy is given up to element 1, then some of that energy is given up to element 2. Note that: Energy Gained in the battery = Energy lost in Element "1" + Energy lost in Element "2".

Note that this is simply a statement of Conservation of Energy. Now, if we know the voltages at points in the circuit, we can compute the work done as the charge moves (current flows) around the circuit. Let's imagine that we have two (2) couloumbs of charge and we move it around the circuit shown above. Let's compute how much work will be done as the charge moves through the circuit. We will pose that as a sequence of short problems. Problems P3 Here's the first question for you. In the circuit above, the battery is a twelve volt battery. You move 2 coulombs of charge from the bottom of the battery to the top of the battery. Click on the button you think gives the value of the work that is done moving the charge.

P4 After the current goes through the battery, it then flows through Element #1. Element #1 has 9 volts across it. How much energy is transferred to Element #1 as the charge flows through it? (Alternatively, how much work does the charge do?) Give your answer in Joules. Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: P5 Now, consider what happens when the charge flows through Element #2. First, determine whether the charge gains energy or loses energy as it flows through Element #2.

P6 How much energy does it lose going through Element #2. Give your answer in Joules. Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: P7 Now, let's test how well you really understand all this stuff. What's the voltage across Element #2? Give your anser in volts. Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is: What points should you remember from this? If you can put potential energy into a charge (as in a battery, for example) then whatever energy the charge acquires in the process is transferred totally to whatever elements the charge passes through as it wends its way back to the point where it has no potential energy. Electrical engineers would say this slightly differently. Here's how they would say it.

If a charge is raised from zero voltage (zero potential energy) to a higher voltage (as in a battery, for example), then when that charge moves back to the point of zero potential energy it passes through voltages that sum to whatever the voltage was that it passed through to acquire the energy.

This is really a statement of conservation of energy, and you can realize that once you remember that voltage is really potential energy per unit of charge. We also need to be more precise in our discussion of voltage. Engineers communicate with symbols, and they use special symbols to show voltages. Let's look at the circuit we used earlier. We have added symbols to define all of the voltages in the circuit. For example, we have defined a symbol, VB, that represents the voltage across the battery. For the voltage, VB , as we have defined it, we can compute the energy added to a charge, Q, when it moves from the bottom of the battery (at the "-" sign) to the top of the battery (at the "+" sign) as Q*VB. Let's get a complete set of statements about what happens as charge moves around this circuit.

As a charge, Q, moves from the bottom of the battery (at the "-" sign) to the top of the battery (at the "+" sign), the charge gains an amount of energy, Q*VB. The units are coulombs for charge, volts for voltage and joules for energy. As a charge, Q, moves from the top of element #1 (at the "+" sign) to the bottom of element #1 (at the "-" sign), the charge loses an amount of energy, Q*V1. As a charge, Q, moves from the top of element #2 (at the "+" sign) to the bottom of element #2 (at the "-" sign), the charge loses an amount of energy, Q*V2. We can generalize these statements.

If we have used the convention introduced above - with "+" and "-" signs - for voltage, then when a charge, Q, moves from the end of the element labelled with a "-" sign to the end of the element

labelled with a "+" sign, the charge gains QV joules, where V is the voltage across the element. Now, it's time for you to answer a few questions. Questions Here is a more complex circuit.

Imagine that you have a charge, Q, which is moved between various points in the circuit. The points we will consider are marked with little green squares, and have alphabetical labels (A through F). Answer the following Questions. Q1. If a charge moves from point B to point C, how much energy does the charge lose? Be careful with your signs.

Q2. If a charge moves from point C to point D, how much energy does the charge lose? Be careful with your signs. Q3. If a charge moves from point D to point E, how much energy does the charge lose? Be careful with your signs.

We'll repeat the diagram so you don't have to scroll to answer the last few questions.

Q4. If a charge moves from point E to point F, how much energy does the charge lose? Be careful with your signs.

Q5. If a charge moves from point F to point A, how much energy does the charge lose? Be careful with your signs.

Problem P8 Assume that you have a twelve volt battery. How many joules of work would you have to do to move 0.4 couloumbs from the negative terminal to the positive terminal? Enter your answer in the box below, then click the button to submit your answer. You will get a grade on a 0 (completely wrong) to 100 (perfectly accurate answer) scale.

Your grade is:

Finally, you may have noticed a funny little symbol connected to point E in the drawing in the questions. That symbol is a ground symbol, and it has some importance. Ground is the reference voltage from which all other voltages in a circuit can be measured. Let us consider a battery connected in a piece of electronic equipment. Very often there is some obvious reference from which you can measure voltage. In homes and buildings that reference is the ground. Interestingly, ground level is often used as a reference when you compute potential energy of a weight that has been raised, so that's another little thing that electrical and mechanical systems share. The "electrical community" has come to agreement that the potential of the earth itself is the reference from which voltages are to be measured. In many pieces of electrical and electronic instrumentation there is a terminal connected directly to ground. Those terminals look like the following. The black connector on an electronic instrument will be the ground connection. (And, the British will refer to it as the "earth" connection.)

Like mechanical potential energy, electrical potential energy and voltage are measured from a reference. For mechanical energy, that might be ground level. It's just that some reference needs to be chosen. (And, it is chosen, not pre-ordained by nature!) Electrical systems need a reference and the reference usually chosen is ground. That means the reference is the earth itself. (In America, we usually refer to that as "ground" while the English refer to it as "earth".) In any event, in any piece of electrical or electronic equipment, "ground" voltage is always available. It's the voltage at the third prong of the plug you put into the wall socket.

In any event, the voltage level of the ground in your vicinity is chosen as a reference voltage, and often voltages are measured from that reference. Since we must always talk about voltage differences, we should realize that if we say that some electrical terminal (a point in space) is at a voltage level of 120 volts, we mean that the voltage difference between that point and ground is 120 volts.

Rule to Remember: Whenever you talk about a voltage, you are always talking about a voltage difference! - and you should specify the two points in space where that difference exists.

Shown below is a picture of a wall plug. The small circular hole at the bottom is connected directly to ground. If you trace out the wiring in your home, you should find that the wire that makes the connection to the circular hole is connected (behind the walls) to a water pipe, or something else that makes good contact with the ground on which the house is built.

What's more, if you measure the voltage between the other connections and ground you will usually find that one of them is at a voltage of 120 volts. We would say that that voltage is 120 volts measured with respect to ground. We take advantage of that connection in electronic instrumentation and many instruments can measure voltage with respect to ground, or can generate a voltage relative to ground. This is a source of voltage that is very common. Finally, the last important concept. Don't try to plug a plug into the picture above. Use a real wall plug. At this point, you've started to get acquainted with voltage. If you have to use circuits with live voltage you'll need to know how to measure voltage, and a few other things. That's the next section.

Measuring Voltage If you deal with circuits you will need to be able to measure voltages in circuits. That's the one skill you absolutely must have if you want to check that a circuit is operating properly. You know that Murphy's law prevails. If anything can go wrong, it will. You will always need to check a circuit's operation to see if it is working correctly. Actually, you'll probably need to check it to find out why it isn't working. Many times you will do that using a voltmeter. In this section we'll discuss how to use a voltmeter to measure voltages in an operating circuit. (Click here for a longer discussion of measuring voltage, and links to some experiments.) There are many other situations in which you would want to be able to measure voltage. For example, you might have an LM35 temperature sensor. Then the output of the sensor is a voltage that is proportional to the temperature of the sensor. We will give you a choice here. You can continue in this lesson, or you can read the lesson devoted entirely to voltage measurements. Click here to go to that lesson which covers numerous laboratory measurements and gives you several experiments to perform. Using a Voltmeter Here's a representation of a voltmeter. For our introduction to the voltmeter, we need to be aware of three items on the voltmeter.

The display. This is where the result of the measurement is displayed. Your meter might be either analog or digital. If it's

analog you need to read a reading off a scale. If it's digital, it will usually have an LED or LCD display panel where you can see what the voltage measurement is. The positive input terminal, and it's almost always red. The negative input terminal, and it's almost always black.

Next, you need to be aware of what the voltmeter measures. Here it is in a nutshell.

A voltmeter measures the voltage difference between the positive input terminal of the voltmeter and the negative input terminal.

That's it. That's what it measures. Nothing more, nothing less just that voltage difference. That means you can measure voltage differences in a circuit by connecting the positive input terminal and the negative input terminal to locations in a circuit. Next, we'll look at a circuit diagram. We'll show a voltmeter connected to the circuit diagram - a mixed metaphor approach. Forgive us for that, but let's look at it. It's right below.

Here's a voltmeter shown connected to a circuit. This shows where you would place the leads if you wanted to measure the voltage across element #4.

Notice that the voltmeter measures the voltage across element #4, +V4. Notice the polarity definitions for V4, and notice how the red terminal is connected to the "+" end of element #4. If you reversed the leads, you would be measuring -V4.

Here's a portion of a circuit board. You want to measure the voltage across R27. Click on where you should put the voltmeter leads. What If ? At this point, you're starting to become comfortable with voltage. Don't become too comfortable. Always respect two things about voltage.

It can give you a shock, and a large enough voltage can be lethal. It's more complicated than we've really indicated so far.

You Need To Know More About Voltage So far, we've just examined voltage as though it were across one device. However, if we look at the example circuit we used before we realize that there are lots of voltages in this circuit. If we measure them, how do we know our measurements make sense? There are laws that voltage obeys. The most important one is Kirchhoff's Voltage Law (click here to go to the lesson!), (KVL) and it's the subject of another lesson. It is an important relationship that voltage obeys, and it is the starting point for analysis of circuits of any complexity. That's it for this lesson. You can exit this lesson and start another lesson by clicking the up-pointing arrow below. Or you can go directly to several places from this page. You can use any of these hotwordsto take you to a lesson of your choice.