Electric Current, Resistance, and Ohm's Law

This pathway explores the essential ideas relating to electric charge as a property of a system that affects its interaction with other charged systems, whereas electric current is fundamentally the movement of charge through a conductor and is based on the fact that electric charge is conserved within a system. The conservation of charge also leads to the concept of an electric circuit as a closed loop of electrical current. In addition, this pathway discusses examples showing that the current in a circuit is resisted by the elements of the circuit and the strength of the resistance depends on the material of the elements. The pathway also describes how the interaction of systems of objects can result in changes in those systems. The unifying theme of the physics curriculum is that any changes in the systems due to interactions are governed by laws of conservation. This pathway applies the idea of energy conservation to electric circuits and connects concepts of electric energy and electric power as rates of energy use.