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Ampere

physical science Maturity 11-13 Next article →

Electricity moves in a flow. We call this flow electric current. We measure this flow using a unit called the ampere. People often call it an amp for short.

One ampere means one coulomb of charge moves past a point every second. A coulomb is a way to measure electric charge. You can think of an ampere as a count of tiny charges. One ampere is about 6.241 x 10^18 elementary charges moving every second.

The ampere is named after André-Marie Ampère. He was a French scientist. He helped us understand how electricity and magnets work together. This study is called electromagnetism.

Scientists use different ways to define the ampere. Before 2019, they used the force between two wires. Now, they use a fixed number for the elementary charge. This makes the measurement very steady.

You can measure current with a tool called a multimeter. This tool can also measure voltage and resistance. The ampere helps us understand power. Power is the result of current and voltage working together.

Captions:

The symbol for the ampere is A.

André-Marie Ampère was a famous scientist.

A multimeter measures electric current.

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