Amperage for the Dummy Electrician

Ohms Law Revisited

As our staffers wander the web in search of people who sold their respectability for the sake of a few pennies (which is probably why so many of them use pseudonyms), they often find posts that reveal more about the writer than might have been intended. Take, for instance, today's post: "How to Boost Amperage," which Timothy Burns penned for eHow.com and which has since been moved to Sciencing.com by Leaf Group.

Naturally, one might wonder just why anyone would want to "boost" amperage; but Burns never got into that. No, he immediately jumped to Ohm's Law, V = IR. Tim's problem, unfortunately, is that he doesn't seem to understand the language involved (presumably as a result of scientific illiteracy):

"Ohm's Law defines the relationship between voltage, amperage and resistance in an electrical circuit. These three properties are forever joined at the hip – any change in one of them affects the other two directly." Well, no, Tim, "directly" is not correct. You see, Voltage (V) in a circuit is directly proportional to both amperage (I) and resistance (R). but if you solve Ohm's law for amperage, you get the relationship I = V/R -- which means the amperage is indirectly related to the resistance in the circuit: with constant voltage, as resistance increases, amperage decreases. So, no, they're not "joined at the hip"! Oh, Timmy got it sort of right when he said (albeit ungrammatically) that "...Resistance in an electrical circuit can be reduced by increasing the size of the conductors, that is, by using a larger diameter copper conductors [sic]..."

...and he was on the right track when he mumbled something about

"If the electrical circuit contains IC chips called resistors, resistance can also be lowered by using a lower rated resistor, for example, changing a 4 ohm resistor to a 2 ohm resistor..."

...but it was pretty clear from the get-go that Burns was definitely out of his comfort zone when he tried to explain electricity and electrical circuits: "IC chips called resistors"? are you kidding us? Sure, this accomplished freelancer writes pretty, but we prefer that our information be accurate – pretty can come later. Otherwise, it's just more fodder for a Dumbass of the Day award.

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