Topic 2 Electricity GCSE Physics Flashcards
What is electric current?
- flow of electric charge
When will electric charge flow around a complete circuit?
- if there is a potential difference
What is the unit of current?
- ampere
- A
What is the current in a single/closed loop?
- current has the same value everywhere in the circuit
What is potential difference?
- driving force that pushes the charge around
What is the unit for potential difference?
- volt
- V
What is resistance?
- anything that slows the flow down
What is the unit for resistance?
- ohm
What does the current flowing through the component depend on?
- the potential difference across it and the resistance of the component
A greater resistance means what for the current?
- the greater the resistance across a component, the smaller the current that flows
What is the size of the current?
- rate of flow of charge
- more charged passes around the circuit when a larger current flows
What is the charge equation?
charge flow= current X time
LEARN CURRENT SYMBOLS
P 24
How do you calculate potential difference?
potential difference = current X resistance
How can you investigate the factors affecting resistance?
1- attach the crocodile clip to wire level with 0cm on the ruler
2- attach second crocodile clip to the wire (10cm away from the first clip)
3- close the switch then record the current and pd
4- open switch then move the second crocodile clip another 10 cm across the wire, close switch again and record current and pd
5- repeat for different lengths
6- work out resistance
- graph should be a straight line
What is an ammeter?
- measures current (in amps)
- ammeter must always be placed in series
What is a voltmeter?
- measures the potential difference
- must always be placed in parallel around whatever your in investigating
Does the resistance of ohmic conductors change with the current?
- does not change with the current
- at a constant temperature the current flowing through an ohmic conductor is directly proportional to the pd across it
What happens when an electric charge flows through a filament lamp?
- it transfer some energy to the thermal energy store of the filament which is designed to heat up
For diodes, what does the resistance depend on?
- depends on the direction of the current
look at bottom of p26
iv graphs!!
What is an LDR?
- resistor that is dependent on the intensity of light
- in bright light the resistance falls
- in darkness the resistance is highest
What is a thermistor?
- temperature dependent resistor
- in hot conditions the resistance drops
- in cool conditions the resistance goes up
What can sensing circuits be used to?
- to turn on and increase the power to components depending on the conditions they are in
How are the different components connected in a series circuit?
- in a line, end to end
In a series circuit, how is pd shared?
- the total pd of the supply is shared between the various components
- so the pd around a series circuit always adds up to the equal source pd
V total= V1 +V2 + ….
How is the current in a series circuit?
- the same current flows through all components
- the size of the current is determined by the total pd of cells and the total resistance of the circuit
How is the resistance in a series circuit?
- the total resistance of two components is just the sum of their resistances