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In other media, any stream of charged objects (ions, for example) may constitute an electric current. To provide a definition of current independent of the type of charge carriers, conventional current is defined as moving in the same direction as the positive charge flow. So, in metals where the charge carriers (electrons) are negative ...
The electric field was formally defined as the force exerted per unit charge, but the concept of potential allows for a more useful and equivalent definition: the electric field is the local gradient of the electric potential. Usually expressed in volts per metre, the vector direction of the field is the line of greatest slope of potential, and ...
The usual waveform of alternating current in most electric power circuits is a sine wave, whose positive half-period corresponds with positive direction of the current and vice versa (the full period is called a cycle). "Alternating current" most commonly refers to power distribution, but a wide range of other applications are technically ...
The term DC is used to refer to power systems that use only one electrical polarity of voltage or current, and to refer to the constant, zero-frequency, or slowly varying local mean value of a voltage or current. [9] For example, the voltage across a DC voltage source is constant as is the current through a direct current source.
Electric power is the rate of transfer of electrical energy within a circuit.Its SI unit is the watt, the general unit of power, defined as one joule per second.Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions of watts are called kilowatts, megawatts and gigawatts respectively.
Electric current is the flow of electric charge through an object. The most common charge carriers are the positively charged proton and the negatively charged electron . The movement of any of these charged particles constitutes an electric current.
Three-phase electric power (abbreviated 3ϕ [1]) is a common type of alternating current (AC) used in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. [2] It is a type of polyphase system employing three wires (or four including an optional neutral return wire) and is the most common method used by electrical grids worldwide to transfer ...
Current (hydrology), currents in rivers and streams; Convection current, flow caused by unstable density variation due to temperature differences; Current (mathematics), geometrical current in differential topology; Conserved current, a field associated to a symmetry in field theory; Electric current, a flow of electric charge through a medium