We learned Ohm\'s Law: .The current, I, is how many Coulombs of charge flow past

Question

We learned Ohm's Law: .The current, I, is how many Coulombs of charge flow past a certainpoint in the wire per second. That's like how many gallons of waterflow by a certain point in the pipe per second. The resistance, R,is what impedes the current flow...like the gunky buildup thatclogs water pipes. The potential difference is like the waterpressure. That's what drives the current through the wires, justlike water pressure is what actually pushes water throughpipes...water flows from high pressure areas to low pressureareas.

I would like another analogy for .These help me understand it better. Please explainwhat ,I, and R correspond to in your analogy.

Explanation / Answer

you can equate it with a linearly elastic spring: F=kx where: F=V k=R x=I the spring stiffness k acts to stop the spring from stretching(resistance) a length x (current). and then the potentialdifference is the total force needed to stretch the spring. so, as an example, a high spring stiffness and a long stretch takesa lot of force, just like a high resistance and a high currentresults in a high potential difference as a side note, the flow in a pipe is a bad analogy becausemathematically it is not a linear relationship like ohm's law is(the pressure is related to the square of the velocity). Anything with a linear relationship can be used as a goodanalogy

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