Lectures on Physics has been derived from Benjamin Crowell's Light and Matter series of free introductory textbooks on physics. See the editorial for more information....

Home Electricity Circuits Resistance
See also: Georg Simon Ohm 
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Resistance

So far we have simply presented it as an observed fact that a battery-and-bulb circuit quickly settles down to a steady flow, but why should it? Newton's second law, a=F/m, would seem to predict that the steady forces on the charged particles should make them whip around the circuit faster and faster. The answer is that as charged particles move through matter, there are always forces, analogous to frictional forces, that resist the motion. These forces need to be included in Newton's second law, which is really a=Ftotal/m, not a=F/m. If, by analogy, you push a crate across the floor at constant speed, i.e. with zero acceleration, the total force on it must be zero. After you get the crate going, the floor's frictional force is exactly canceling out your force. The chemical energy stored in your body is being transformed into heat in the crate and the floor, and no longer into an increase in the crate's kinetic energy. Similarly, the battery's internal chemical energy is converted into heat, not into perpetually increasing the charged particles' kinetic energy. Changing energy into heat may be a nuisance in some circuits, such as a computer chip, but it is vital in a lightbulb, which must get hot enough to glow. Whether we like it or not, this kind of heating effect is going to occur any time charged particles move through matter.

What determines the amount of heating? One flashlight bulb designed to work with a 9-volt battery might be labeled 1.0 watts, another 5.0. How does this work? Even without knowing the details of this type of friction at the atomic level, we can relate the heat dissipation to the amount of current that flows via the equation P=IΔV. If the two flashlight bulbs can have two different values of P when used with a battery that maintains the same ΔV, it must be that the 5.0-watt bulb allows five times more current to flow through it.

For many substances, including the tungsten from which lightbulb filaments are made, experiments show that the amount of current that will flow through it is directly proportional to the voltage difference placed across it. For an object made of such a substance, we define its electrical resistance as follows:

Definition of resistance If an object inserted in a circuit displays a current flow which is proportional to the voltage difference across it, we define its resistance as the constant ratio

R = ΔV/I.

The units of resistance are volts/ampere, usually abbreviated as ohms (acc. to Georg Simon Ohm), symbolized with the capital Greek letter omega, Ω

Resistance of a lightbulb

Ohm's law states that many substances, including many solids and some liquids, display this kind of behavior, at least for voltages that are not too large. The fact that Ohm's law is called a "law" should not be taken to mean that all materials obey it, or that it has the same fundamental importance as Newton's laws, for example. Materials are called ohmic or nonohmic, depending on whether they obey Ohm's law.

If objects of the same size and shape made from two different ohmic materials have different resistances, we can say that one material is more resistive than the other, or equivalently that it is less conductive. Materials, such as metals, that are very conductive are said to be good conductors. Those that are extremely poor conductors, for example wood or rubber, are classified as insulators. There is no sharp distinction between the two classes of materials. Some, such as silicon, lie midway between the two extremes, and are called semiconductors.

On an intuitive level, we can understand the idea of resistance by making the sounds "hhhhhh" and "ffffff." To make air flow out of your mouth, you use your diaphragm to compress the air in your chest. The pressure difference between your chest and the air outside your mouth is analogous to a voltage difference. When you make the "h" sound, you form your mouth and throat in a way that allows air to flow easily. The large flow of air is like a large current. Dividing by a large current in the definition of resistance means that we get a small resistance. We say that the small resistance of your mouth and throat allows a large current to flow. When you make the "f" sound, you increase the resistance and cause a smaller current to flow.

Note that although the resistance of an object depends on the substance it is made of, we cannot speak simply of the "resistance of gold" or the "resistance of wood." The figures show four examples of objects that have had wires attached at the ends as electrical connections. If they were made of the same substance, they would all nevertheless have different resistances because of their different sizes and shapes. A more detailed discussion will be more natural in the context of the following chapter, but it should not be too surprising that the resistance of (b) will be greater than that of (a) - the image of water flowing through a pipe, however incorrect, gives us the right intuition. Object (c) will have a smaller resistance than (a) because the charged particles have less of it to get through.



Home Electricity Circuits Resistance

Last Update: 2010-11-11