ampere
Pluralamperes
- 1The base unit of electric current in the International System of Units, commonly shortened to amp.
Like a measure of traffic flow: how many cars pass a checkpoint in a given stretch of time.
The circuit breaker trips whenever the current climbs above sixteen amperes.
Each ampere flowing through the resistor produces a measurable amount of heat.
Note
A unit named for the French physicist André-Marie Ampère, which is why its symbol is a capital A while the word itself is written lowercase and without his accent. It is now fixed through the elementary charge, set at exactly 1.602176634 × 10⁻¹⁹ coulomb, so one ampere is one coulomb passing a point each second. In everyday talk it is simply the amp.
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Origin
Named after the French physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836).