Confirming Pages

18.1

conductors and insulators (Section 16.2)

electric potential (Section 17.2)
capacitors (Section 17.5)
solving simultaneous equations (Appendix A.2)
power (Section 6.8)

18.1

641

ELECTRIC CURRENT

Concepts & Skills to Review

ELECTRIC CURRENT

A net flow of charge is called an electric current. The current (symbol I ) is defined as
the net amount of charge passing per unit time through an area perpendicular to the flow
direction (Fig. 18.1). The magnitude of the current tells us the rate of the net flow of
charge. If q is the net charge that passes through the shaded surface in Fig. 18.1 during
a time interval t, then the current in the wire is defined as
Definition of current:
q
I = ___
t

(18-1)

Currents are not necessarily steady. In order for Eq. (18-1) to define the instantaneous
current, we must use a sufficiently small time interval t.
The SI unit of current, equal to one coulomb per second, is the ampere (A), named
for the French scientist Andr-Marie Ampre (17751836). The ampere is one of the SI
base units; the coulomb is a derived unit defined as one ampere-second:

CONNECTION:
When a conductor is in electrostatic equilibrium, there
are no currents; the electric
field within the conducting
material is zero and the entire
conductor is at the same
potential. If we can keep a
conductor from reaching
electrostatic equilibrium by
maintaining a potential difference between two points of a
conductor, then the electric
field within the conducting
material is not zero and a sustained current exists in the
conductor.

1 C = 1 As
Small currents are more conveniently measured in milliamperes (mA = 103 A) or in
microamperes (A = 106 A). The word amperes is often shortened to amps; for smaller
currents, we speak of milliamps or microamps.
Conventional Current According to convention, the direction of an electric current
is defined as the direction in which positive charge is transported or would be transported to produce an equivalent movement of net charge. Benjamin Franklin established
this convention (and decided which kind of charge would be called positive) long before
scientists understood that the mobile charges (or charge carriers) in metals are electrons. If electrons move to the left in a metal wire, the direction of the current is to the
right; negative charge moving to the left has the same effect on the net distribution of
charge as positive charge moving to the right.
In most situations, the motion of positive charge in one direction causes the same
macroscopic effects as the motion of negative charge in the opposite direction. In circuit
analysis, we always draw currents in the conventional direction regardless of the sign of
the charge carriers.

CHECKPOINT 18.1
In a water pipe, there is an enormous amount of moving chargethe protons
(charge +e) and electrons (charge e) in the neutral water molecules all move
with the same average velocity. Does the water carry an electric current? Explain.

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Direction of current = direction of

flow of positive charge

Current direction
e

Area A
e

e
Conducting
wire

e
e
e

e
e

e
e

E inside
the wire

Figure 18.1 Close-up picture of

a wire that carries an electric current. The current is the rate of flow
of charge through an area perpendicular to the direction of flow.

12/4/08 11:36:23 PM