Equivalently, it is the potential difference between two points that will impart one joule of energy per coulomb of charge that passes through it. It can be expressed in terms of SI base units (m, kg, s, and A) as
It can also be expressed as amperes times ohms (current times resistance, Ohm's law), webers per second (magnetic flux per time), watts per ampere (power per current), or joules per coulomb (energy per charge), which is also equivalent to electronvolts per elementary charge:
The volt is named after Alessandro Volta. As with every SI unit named for a person, its symbol starts with an upper case letter (V), but when written in full, it follows the rules for capitalisation of a common noun; i.e., volt becomes capitalised at the beginning of a sentence and in titles but is otherwise in lower case.
For the Josephson constant, KJ = 2e/h (where e is the elementary charge and h is the Planck constant), a "conventional" value KJ-90 = 0.4835979 GHz/μV was used for the purpose of defining the volt. As a consequence of the 2019 redefinition of SI base units, as of 2019 the Josephson constant has an exact value of KJ = 483597.84841698... GHz/V, which replaced the conventional value KJ-90.
This standard is typically realized using a series-connected array of several thousand or tens of thousands of junctions, excited by microwave signals between 10 and 80 GHz (depending on the array design).[4] Empirically, several experiments have shown that the method is independent of device design, material, measurement setup, etc., and no correction terms are required in a practical implementation.[5]
Water-flow analogy
In the water-flow analogy, sometimes used to explain electric circuits by comparing them with water-filled pipes, voltage (difference in electric potential) is likened to difference in water pressure, while current is proportional to the amount of water flowing. A resistor would be a reduced diameter somewhere in the piping or something akin to a radiator offering resistance to flow.
The relationship between voltage and current is defined (in ohmic devices like resistors) by Ohm's law. Ohm's Law is analogous to the Hagen–Poiseuille equation, as both are linear models relating flux and potential in their respective systems.
Common voltages
The voltage produced by each electrochemical cell in a battery is determined by the chemistry of that cell (see Galvanic cell § Cell voltage). Cells can be combined in series for multiples of that voltage, or additional circuitry added to adjust the voltage to a different level. Mechanical generators can usually be constructed to any voltage in a range of feasibility.
Automobile battery systems are 2.1 volts per cell; a "12 V" battery is 6 cells, or 12.6 V; a "24 V" battery is 12 cells, or 25.2 V. Some antique vehicles use "6 V" 3-cell batteries, or 6.3 volts.
In 1800, as the result of a professional disagreement over the galvanic response advocated by Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta developed the so-called voltaic pile, a forerunner of the battery, which produced a steady electric current. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of dissimilar metals to produce electricity was zinc and silver. In 1861, Latimer Clark and Sir Charles Bright coined the name "volt" for the unit of resistance.[11] By 1873, the British Association for the Advancement of Science had defined the volt, ohm, and farad.[12] In 1881, the International Electrical Congress, now the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), approved the volt as the unit for electromotive force.[13] They made the volt equal to 108cgs units of voltage, the cgs system at the time being the customary system of units in science. They chose such a ratio because the cgs unit of voltage is inconveniently small and one volt in this definition is approximately the emf of a Daniell cell, the standard source of voltage in the telegraph systems of the day.[14] At that time, the volt was defined as the potential difference [i.e., what is nowadays called the "voltage (difference)"] across a conductor when a current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power.
The "international volt" was defined in 1893 as 1⁄1.434 of the emf of a Clark cell. This definition was abandoned in 1908 in favor of a definition based on the international ohm and international ampere until the entire set of "reproducible units" was abandoned in 1948.[15]
^Keller, Mark W. (2008-01-18), "Current status of the quantum metrology triangle"(PDF), Metrologia, 45 (1): 102–109, Bibcode:2008Metro..45..102K, doi:10.1088/0026-1394/45/1/014, ISSN0026-1394, S2CID122008182, archived from the original(PDF) on 2010-05-27, retrieved 2010-04-11, Theoretically, there are no current predictions for any correction terms. Empirically, several experiments have shown that KJ and RK are independent of device design, material, measurement setup, etc. This demonstration of universality is consistent with the exactness of the relations, but does not prove it outright.
^Bullock, Orkand, and Grinnell, pp. 150–151; Junge, pp. 89–90; Schmidt-Nielsen, p. 484.
^Horowitz, Paul; Winfield, Hill (2015). The Art of Electronics (3. ed.). Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press. p. 689. ISBN978-0-521-809269.
^As names for units of various electrical quantities, Bright and Clark suggested "ohma" for voltage, "farad" for charge, "galvat" for current, and "volt" for resistance. See:
Latimer Clark and Sir Charles Bright (1861) "On the formation of standards of electrical quantity and resistance", Report of the Thirty-first Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Manchester, England: September 1861), section: Mathematics and Physics, pp. 37-38.
^Sir W. Thomson, et al. (1873) "First report of the Committee for the Selection and Nomenclature of Dynamical and Electrical Units", Report of the 43rd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Bradford, September 1873), pp. 222-225. From p. 223: "The "ohm," as represented by the original standard coil, is approximately 109 C.G.S. units of resistance; the "volt" is approximately 108 C.G.S. units of electromotive force; and the "farad" is approximately 1/109 of the C.G.S. unit of capacity."
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