AMPERES

What flows inside wires? It has several names:

• Charges of electricity
• Electrons
• Electric charge
• Electrical substance
• The Electron sea
• Electric fluid
• "Charge-stuff"

A quantity of charge is measured in units called COULOMBS, and the word "ampere" means the same thing as "one coulomb of charge flowing per second." If we were talking about water, then Coulombs would be like gallons, and amperage would be like gallons-per-second.

Why are Amperes confusing? Simple: textbooks almost always teach us about amperes and current, but without first clearly explaining the coulombs and charge! Suppose that we had no name for "water," yet our teachers wanted us to learn all about the mysterious flow inside metal plumbing pipes? Suppose we're required to understand "gallons-per-second," but we had to do this without knowing anything about water or about gallons?

If we'd never learned the word "gallon", and if we had no idea that water even existed, how could we hope to understand "flow?" We might even decide that "current" was an abstract concept. Or we might decide that invisible wetness was moving along through the piples. Or we might just give up on trying to understand plumbing at all. We could concentrate on the math and get the correct answers on the tests, but we wouldn't end up with any gut-level understanding. That's the problem with electricity and amperes.