The Lost Secret To Learning Basic Ohms Law

By Greg S. Carpenter

Notice of rights
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
without prior permission of the publisher.
To obtain permission for reprints or excerpts contact Greg Carpenter at gs_carpenter@yahoo.com
copyright 2004

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In this short lesson I will show you a simple method that will
teach you some basic ohms law theory in about 10 minutes!
Many people feel that the underlying principles behind the
operation of modern electronic equipment are really far too
complex to bother learning, but that idea is completely false.
In fact, there is a very simple way to learn a few of the
basics by using everyday experience you already have.
For example, think about the water pipes in your house, it
takes a certain amount of pressure to cause any water to
flow out of the faucet.
The more pressure, the more flow.
The other variable is the pipe.
With the same amount of pressure, if you make the pipe
smaller in diameter less water will flow. Larger diameter,
more flow.
Now do this mind trick, think of electric voltage as pressure,
and electric current as flow.
The higher the voltage (pressure) the higher will be the
current flow.

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In the same way, think of pipe diameter as resistance.

Smaller pipe diameter equals a greater resistance to
current flow.
Guess what?
You have just mastered the three basic foundation points
that modern electronics is built around.
Those points are voltage, current, and resistance.
Think back to the water example and see how these three
interact with each other.
Voltage is pressure. Electromotive FORCE. (emf)
Current depends on pressure (volts) and pipe size
(resistance)
Resistance to current depends on pipe size (value of the
resistor) and applied pressure (volts).
Ponder on all this for a few moments before going on, as it
is a very important concept to understand.

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Now let's look at the terms used to describe and to measure

voltage, current and resistance.
As you probably already know, voltage is measured in volts,
water pressure is measured in pounds per square inch,
current is measured in amps, that is a certain number of
electrons flowing past a point in one second (same as water
flow measured in gallons per minute), and resistance is
measured in ohms (the pipe diameter,smaller pipe is the
same as more resistance).
OK I think you have the idea, voltage does not flow it only
the "pressure" that makes current flow and resistance is,
just that, resistance to current flow.
We are now ready to build a simple circuit on paper to see
how all of this works.
We first need a source of pressure to get the current
moving. For that we will use a imaginary12 volt battery.
Now, how much current do you think will flow using that 12
volt battery?
That depends on the resistance in the circuit and in this
circuit we haven't assigned any yet.
Since we have a 12 volt battery lets use a 12 ohm resistor to
make things easy.

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At this point we now have enough information that we can

calculate the current flow, and as you mayhave guessed, it's
one amp.
Remember voltage is measured in volts current is
measured in amps and resistance to current flow is
measured in ohms.
Here is the formula we all use, it's known as Ohms Law:
E=MC Oh No, wait that's the wrong one.
Try these 3 instead...
E=I*R
I=E/R

R=E/I

'E' is the symbol for voltage and it comes from the term
"Electro Motive Force" or EMF as it's known
(in other words, pressure).
R of course is for resistance, and for reasons even I don't
know, "I" stands for current.
Alright then once again...
E = volts
I = current
R = resistance
If you know any two values you can find the third. For
example if you know the current and the voltage
you can find the resistance. Now back to our circuit.

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We wanted to know the current flow so we used I=E/R

which says current equals volts divided by resistance
(ohms).
In our circuit with 12 volts and 12 ohms it's 12/12 which
equals 1 or 1 amp of current flows around this circuit.
In our example, the circuit is really the 12 ohm resistor
connected across the 12 volt battery. Now what
happens if we change the value of the resistor to 6 ohms?
Using the same formula we see that the current is now 2
amps. That means two amps of current are flowing
through the resistor and through the battery and through the
wire connecting them and around and around the electrons
will go until either the battery runs down, the resistor burns
up, or someone opens the circuit.
That brings us to the three basic circuits.
They are a normal operating circuit, an 'open' or non
operating circuit and a short circuit.
What's a short circuit? Look at the formula for finding
circuit current. It's I=E/R. Now what would happen if we took
out the resistor and put a piece of wire in its place which has
zero resistance?

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Well, you get the BLACKHOLE OF MATH, an infinity!

That's a short circuit! It tries to allow an infinite current which
in the real world will trip the breakers on the main, or in our
circuit, burn up the wire and the battery!
So to have a normal operating circuit you must have a
normal load or resistance across the voltage supply. In
real life the load could be a light bulb, toaster or computer,
but it will have resistance, so the current flow will be limited.
Do you see how this all fits together?
Now you know what would happen if you connected a
switch which has near zero resistance when it's
in the 'on' position across a voltage supply.
You get The Black Hole problem of infinite current along
with smoke, fire and blown fuses.
So current must always flow from the source, through a
normal load and back to the source to complete the
circuit.
If you wanted the off-on switch to work properly, then it
would go anywhere in the circuit as long as it is in series
with the load so it breaks or makes the circuit and does
not present a zero ohm load.

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So far we have looked at voltage resistance and current, but

haven't talked about power.
In our example the resistor is acting as the load on the
battery and since current is flowing, then power is being
dissipated as heat given off from the resistor.
Power is measured in watts.
You may have found that resistors are rated in ohms and
watts. They come in all wattages and the higher the wattage
rating the larger the physical size.
OK back to our circuit, lets put back the 12 ohm resistor so
that the current returns to 1 amp.
Here is how to calculate wattage. Power (watts)=amps times
volts. Or P=I*E (No you can't eat it! That's how to remember
the formula.)
In our circuit, the power dissipated in the resistor (load) is 12
watts. Here is an important tip. If you were to build this
circuit using say a car battery and a 12 ohm resistor rated at
12 watts the resistor will get very hot and probably burn up
in a short time. That's because the 12 watt rating is the
absolute maximum power that the resistor can handle.
So you should always double the power rating of any
resistor for a given circuit.
In our case we would use a 24 watt 12 ohm resistor. Here is
a practical example.

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In the USA the mains voltage is around 120 volts. If we used

a regular, not L.E.D.100 watt light bulb as a load how much
current would flow through the wires, the switch and the
light?
We would need this information to know what size of
breaker or fuse to use.
OK here's the answer...
Remember P=I*E so solving for I (current) gives I=P/E or
100/120 which is 0.83 amps. (100 watts/120 volts)
So a one amp fuse would work fine for a 100 watt load at a
voltage of 120 volts.
For extra credit, what is the resistance of the light bulb?
HINT: R=E/I
If you understand most this report, you might consider
building a simple electronic kit. You will learn what the parts
look like and how they work.
If you don't rush through it, there should be no reason it
won't work the first time you turn it on.
I know that you will get a thrill out of seeing it work and that
will be well the small amount of money it cost.

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What you have just learned is an important "boiled down"

no frills explanation of both ohms law and series DC circuits.
You should continue to study ohms law and its application to
parallel circuits. This should give a strong head start to
anyone taking a higher education electronics course.
Greg Carpenter

For more basic electronics projects please visit www.gregsbasicelectronics.com