1.
Michael Faraday
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Michael Faraday FRS was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, although Faraday received little formal education, he was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was a relationship between the two phenomena. He similarly discovered the principles of induction and diamagnetism. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, Faraday ultimately became the first and foremost Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a lifetime position. James Clerk Maxwell took the work of Faraday and others and summarized it in a set of equations which is accepted as the basis of all theories of electromagnetic phenomena. The SI unit of capacitance is named in his honour, the farad, albert Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, alongside pictures of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. Faraday was born in Newington Butts, which is now part of the London Borough of Southwark but was then a part of Surrey. His family was not well off and his father, James, was a member of the Glassite sect of Christianity. James Faraday moved his wife and two children to London during the winter of 1790 from Outhgill in Westmorland, where he had been an apprentice to the village blacksmith, Michael was born in the autumn of that year. The young Michael Faraday, who was the third of four children, at the age of 14 he became an apprentice to George Riebau, a local bookbinder and bookseller in Blandford Street. During his seven-year apprenticeship Faraday read many books, including Isaac Wattss The Improvement of the Mind, at this time he also developed an interest in science, especially in electricity. Faraday was particularly inspired by the book Conversations on Chemistry by Jane Marcet, many of the tickets for these lectures were given to Faraday by William Dance, who was one of the founders of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Faraday subsequently sent Davy a 300-page book based on notes that he had taken during these lectures, davys reply was immediate, kind, and favourable. In 1813, when Davy damaged his eyesight in an accident with nitrogen trichloride, very soon Davy entrusted Faraday with the preparation of nitrogen trichloride samples, and they both were injured in an explosion of this very sensitive substance. In the class-based English society of the time, Faraday was not considered a gentleman, Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davys wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal, the trip did, however, give him access to the scientific elite of Europe and exposed him to a host of stimulating ideas
2.
Metre
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The metre or meter, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units. The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds, the metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1799, it was redefined in terms of a metre bar. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. In 1983, the current definition was adopted, the imperial inch is defined as 0.0254 metres. One metre is about 3 3⁄8 inches longer than a yard, Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Measuring devices are spelled -meter in all variants of English, the suffix -meter has the same Greek origin as the unit of length. This range of uses is found in Latin, French, English. Thus calls for measurement and moderation. In 1668 the English cleric and philosopher John Wilkins proposed in an essay a decimal-based unit of length, as a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wrens suggestion of defining the metre using a pendulum with a length which produced a half-period of one second, christiaan Huygens had observed that length to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39.26 English inches. This is the equivalent of what is now known to be 997 mm, no official action was taken regarding this suggestion. In the 18th century, there were two approaches to the definition of the unit of length. One favoured Wilkins approach, to define the metre in terms of the length of a pendulum which produced a half-period of one second. The other approach was to define the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant along the Earths meridian, that is, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This means that the quadrant would have defined as exactly 10000000 metres at that time. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, more measurements of this meridian were needed. This portion of the meridian, assumed to be the length as the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator
3.
Kilogram
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The kilogram or kilogramme is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype of the Kilogram. The avoirdupois pound, used in both the imperial and US customary systems, is defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg, making one kilogram approximately equal to 2.2046 avoirdupois pounds. Other traditional units of weight and mass around the world are also defined in terms of the kilogram, the gram, 1/1000 of a kilogram, was provisionally defined in 1795 as the mass of one cubic centimeter of water at the melting point of ice. The final kilogram, manufactured as a prototype in 1799 and from which the IPK was derived in 1875, had an equal to the mass of 1 dm3 of water at its maximum density. The kilogram is the only SI base unit with an SI prefix as part of its name and it is also the only SI unit that is still directly defined by an artifact rather than a fundamental physical property that can be reproduced in different laboratories. Three other base units and 17 derived units in the SI system are defined relative to the kilogram, only 8 other units do not require the kilogram in their definition, temperature, time and frequency, length, and angle. At its 2011 meeting, the CGPM agreed in principle that the kilogram should be redefined in terms of the Planck constant, the decision was originally deferred until 2014, in 2014 it was deferred again until the next meeting. There are currently several different proposals for the redefinition, these are described in the Proposed Future Definitions section below, the International Prototype Kilogram is rarely used or handled. In the decree of 1795, the term gramme thus replaced gravet, the French spelling was adopted in the United Kingdom when the word was used for the first time in English in 1797, with the spelling kilogram being adopted in the United States. In the United Kingdom both spellings are used, with kilogram having become by far the more common, UK law regulating the units to be used when trading by weight or measure does not prevent the use of either spelling. In the 19th century the French word kilo, a shortening of kilogramme, was imported into the English language where it has used to mean both kilogram and kilometer. In 1935 this was adopted by the IEC as the Giorgi system, now known as MKS system. In 1948 the CGPM commissioned the CIPM to make recommendations for a practical system of units of measurement. This led to the launch of SI in 1960 and the subsequent publication of the SI Brochure, the kilogram is a unit of mass, a property which corresponds to the common perception of how heavy an object is. Mass is a property, that is, it is related to the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest, or if in motion to remain in motion at a constant velocity. Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold objects off the cabin floor, they are weightless. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass and inertia, the ratio of the force of gravity on the two objects, measured by the scale, is equal to the ratio of their masses. On April 7,1795, the gram was decreed in France to be the weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the metre
4.
Volt
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The volt is the derived unit for electric potential, electric potential difference, and electromotive force. One volt is defined as the difference in potential between two points of a conducting wire when an electric current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power between those points. It is also equal to the difference between two parallel, infinite planes spaced 1 meter apart that create an electric field of 1 newton per coulomb. Additionally, it is the difference between two points that will impart one joule of energy per coulomb of charge that passes through it. It can also be expressed as amperes times ohms, watts per ampere, or joules per coulomb, for the Josephson constant, KJ = 2e/h, the conventional value KJ-90 is used, K J-90 =0.4835979 GHz μ V. This standard is typically realized using an array of several thousand or tens of thousands of junctions. Empirically, several experiments have shown that the method is independent of device design, material, measurement setup, etc. in the water-flow analogy sometimes used to explain electric circuits by comparing them with water-filled pipes, voltage is likened to difference in water pressure. Current is proportional to the diameter of the pipe or the amount of water flowing at that pressure. A resistor would be a reduced diameter somewhere in the piping, the relationship between voltage and current is defined by Ohms Law. Ohms Law is analogous to the Hagen–Poiseuille equation, as both are linear models relating flux and potential in their respective systems, the voltage produced by each electrochemical cell in a battery is determined by the chemistry of that cell. Cells can be combined in series for multiples of that voltage, mechanical generators can usually be constructed to any voltage in a range of feasibility. High-voltage electric power lines,110 kV and up Lightning, Varies greatly. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of metals to produce electricity was zinc. In 1861, Latimer Clark and Sir Charles Bright coined the name volt for the unit of resistance, by 1873, the British Association for the Advancement of Science had defined the volt, ohm, and farad. In 1881, the International Electrical Congress, now the International Electrotechnical Commission and they made the volt equal to 108 cgs units of voltage, the cgs system at the time being the customary system of units in science. At that time, the volt was defined as the difference across a conductor when a current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power. The international volt was defined in 1893 as 1/1.434 of the emf of a Clark cell and this definition was abandoned in 1908 in favor of a definition based on the international ohm and international ampere until the entire set of reproducible units was abandoned in 1948. Prior to the development of the Josephson junction voltage standard, the volt was maintained in laboratories using specially constructed batteries called standard cells
5.
Capacitor
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A capacitor is a passive two-terminal electrical component that stores electrical energy in an electric field. The effect of a capacitor is known as capacitance, a capacitor was therefore historically first known as an electric condenser. The physical form and construction of practical capacitors vary widely and many types are in common use. Most capacitors contain at least two electrical conductors often in the form of plates or surfaces separated by a dielectric medium. A conductor may be a foil, thin film, sintered bead of metal, the nonconducting dielectric acts to increase the capacitors charge capacity. Materials commonly used as dielectrics include glass, ceramic, plastic film, paper, mica, Capacitors are widely used as parts of electrical circuits in many common electrical devices. Unlike a resistor, a capacitor does not dissipate energy. No current actually flows through the dielectric, instead, the effect is a displacement of charges through the source circuit, if the condition is maintained sufficiently long, this displacement current through the battery ceases. However, if a voltage is applied across the leads of the capacitor. Capacitance is defined as the ratio of the charge on each conductor to the potential difference between them. The unit of capacitance in the International System of Units is the farad, capacitance values of typical capacitors for use in general electronics range from about 1 pF to about 1 mF. The capacitance of a capacitor is proportional to the area of the plates. In practice, the dielectric between the plates passes a small amount of leakage current and it has an electric field strength limit, known as the breakdown voltage. The conductors and leads introduce an undesired inductance and resistance, Capacitors are widely used in electronic circuits for blocking direct current while allowing alternating current to pass. In analog filter networks, they smooth the output of power supplies, in resonant circuits they tune radios to particular frequencies. In electric power systems, they stabilize voltage and power flow. The property of energy storage in capacitors was exploited as dynamic memory in digital computers. Von Kleists hand and the water acted as conductors, and the jar as a dielectric, von Kleist found that touching the wire resulted in a powerful spark, much more painful than that obtained from an electrostatic machine
6.
Supercapacitor
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A supercapacitor is a high-capacity capacitor with capacitance values much higher than other capacitors that bridge the gap between electrolytic capacitors and rechargeable batteries. Smaller units are used as backup for static random-access memory. Supercapacitors do not use the solid dielectric of ordinary capacitors. The separation of charge is of the order of a few ångströms, Electrochemical pseudocapacitors use metal oxide or conducting polymer electrodes with a high amount of electrochemical pseudocapacitance additional to the double-layer capacitance. Pseudocapacitance is achieved by Faradaic electron charge-transfer with redox reactions, intercalation or electrosorption, Hybrid capacitors, such as the lithium-ion capacitor, use electrodes with differing characteristics, one exhibiting mostly electrostatic capacitance and the other mostly electrochemical capacitance. Supercapacitors are polarized by design with asymmetric electrodes, or, for symmetric electrodes, development of the double layer and pseudocapacitance models. In the early 1950s, General Electric engineers began experimenting with porous carbon electrodes, in the design of capacitors, from the design of fuel cells, activated charcoal is an electrical conductor that is an extremely porous spongy form of carbon with a high specific surface area. In 1957 H. Becker developed a Low voltage electrolytic capacitor with porous carbon electrodes and he believed that the energy was stored as a charge in the carbon pores as in the pores of the etched foils of electrolytic capacitors. General Electric did not immediately pursue this work, in 1966 researchers at Standard Oil of Ohio developed another version of the component as electrical energy storage apparatus, while working on experimental fuel cell designs. The nature of energy storage was not described in this patent. Even in 1970, the electrochemical capacitor patented by Donald L. Boos was registered as a capacitor with activated carbon electrodes. Early electrochemical capacitors used two aluminum foils covered with activated carbon—the electrodes—which were soaked in an electrolyte and separated by a thin porous insulator and this design gave a capacitor with a capacitance on the order of one farad, significantly higher than electrolytic capacitors of the same dimensions. This basic mechanical design remains the basis of most electrochemical capacitors, SOHIO did not commercialize their invention, licensing the technology to NEC, who finally marketed the results as supercapacitors in 1971, to provide backup power for computer memory. Between 1975 and 1980 Brian Evans Conway conducted extensive fundamental and development work on ruthenium oxide electrochemical capacitors, in 1991 he described the difference between Supercapacitor and Battery behavior in electrochemical energy storage. In 1999 he coined the term supercapacitor to explain the increased capacitance by surface redox reactions with faradaic charge transfer between electrodes and ions, the working mechanisms of pseudocapacitors are redox reactions, intercalation and electrosorption. With his research, Conway greatly expanded the knowledge of electrochemical capacitors and that changed around 1978 as Panasonic marketed its Goldcaps brand. This product became an energy source for memory backup applications. In 1987 ELNA Dynacaps entered the market, first generation EDLCs had relatively high internal resistance that limited the discharge current
7.
Integrated circuit
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An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece of semiconductor material, normally silicon. The ICs mass production capability, reliability and building-block approach to circuit design ensured the rapid adoption of standardized ICs in place of using discrete transistors. ICs are now used in all electronic equipment and have revolutionized the world of electronics. Computers, mobile phones, and other home appliances are now inextricable parts of the structure of modern societies, made possible by the small size. These advances, roughly following Moores law, allow a computer chip of 2016 to have millions of times the capacity, ICs have two main advantages over discrete circuits, cost and performance. Cost is low because the chips, with all their components, are printed as a unit by photolithography rather than being constructed one transistor at a time, furthermore, packaged ICs use much less material than discrete circuits. Performance is high because the ICs components switch quickly and consume little power because of their small size, the main disadvantage of ICs is the high cost to design them and fabricate the required photomasks. This high initial cost means ICs are only practical when high production volumes are anticipated, Circuits meeting this definition can be constructed using many different technologies, including thin-film transistor, thick film technology, or hybrid integrated circuit. However, in general usage integrated circuit has come to refer to the single-piece circuit construction originally known as a integrated circuit. Jacobi disclosed small and cheap hearing aids as typical industrial applications of his patent, an immediate commercial use of his patent has not been reported. The idea of the circuit was conceived by Geoffrey Dummer. Dummer presented the idea to the public at the Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington and he gave many symposia publicly to propagate his ideas, and unsuccessfully attempted to build such a circuit in 1956. A precursor idea to the IC was to create small ceramic squares, Components could then be integrated and wired into a bidimensional or tridimensional compact grid. This idea, which seemed very promising in 1957, was proposed to the US Army by Jack Kilby, however, as the project was gaining momentum, Kilby came up with a new, revolutionary design, the IC. In his patent application of 6 February 1959, Kilby described his new device as a body of semiconductor material … wherein all the components of the circuit are completely integrated. The first customer for the new invention was the US Air Force, Kilby won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit. His work was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009, half a year after Kilby, Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor developed his own idea of an integrated circuit that solved many practical problems Kilbys had not. Noyces design was made of silicon, whereas Kilbys chip was made of germanium, Noyce credited Kurt Lehovec of Sprague Electric for the principle of p–n junction isolation, a key concept behind the IC
8.
Printed circuit board
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Components are generally soldered on the PCB. Advanced PCBs may contain components embedded in the substrate, PCBs can be single sided, double sided or multi-layer. Conductors on different layers are connected with vias, multi-layer PCBs allow for much higher component density. FR-4 glass epoxy is the primary insulating substrate, a basic building block of the PCB is an FR-4 panel with a thin layer of copper foil laminated to one or both sides. In multi-layer boards multiple layers of material are laminated together, printed circuit boards are used in all but the simplest electronic products. Alternatives to PCBs include wire wrap and point-to-point construction, PCBs require the additional design effort to lay out the circuit, but manufacturing and assembly can be automated. Manufacturing circuits with PCBs is cheaper and faster than other wiring methods as components are mounted and wired with one single part. A minimal PCB with a component used for easier prototyping is called a breakout board. When the board has no embedded components it is correctly called a printed wiring board or etched wiring board. However, the printed wiring board has fallen into disuse. A PCB populated with electronic components is called a printed circuit assembly, the IPC preferred term for assembled boards is circuit card assembly, and for assembled backplanes it is backplane assemblies. The term PCB is used both for bare and assembled boards. The world market for bare PCBs exceeded $60.2 billion in 2014, initially PCBs were designed manually by creating a photomask on a clear mylar sheet, usually at two or four times the true size. Starting from the diagram the component pin pads were laid out on the mylar. Rub-on dry transfers of common component footprints increased efficiency, traces were made with self-adhesive tape. Pre-printed non-reproducing grids on the mylar assisted in layout, to fabricate the board, the finished photomask was photolithographically reproduced onto a photoresist coating on the blank copper-clad boards. Modern PCBs are designed with dedicated software, generally in the following steps. Card dimensions and template are decided based on required circuitry and case of the PCB, the positions of the components and heat sinks are determined
9.
Electronics
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Electronics is the science of controlling electrical energy electrically, in which the electrons have a fundamental role. Commonly, electronic devices contain circuitry consisting primarily or exclusively of active semiconductors supplemented with passive elements, the science of electronics is also considered to be a branch of physics and electrical engineering. The ability of electronic devices to act as switches makes digital information processing possible, until 1950 this field was called radio technology because its principal application was the design and theory of radio transmitters, receivers, and vacuum tubes. Today, most electronic devices use semiconductor components to perform electron control and this article focuses on engineering aspects of electronics. Components are generally intended to be connected together, usually by being soldered to a circuit board. Components may be packaged singly, or in more complex groups as integrated circuits, some common electronic components are capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes, transistors, etc. Components are often categorized as active or passive, vacuum tubes were among the earliest electronic components. They were almost solely responsible for the revolution of the first half of the Twentieth Century. They took electronics from parlor tricks and gave us radio, television, phonographs, radar, long distance telephony and they played a leading role in the field of microwave and high power transmission as well as television receivers until the middle of the 1980s. Since that time, solid state devices have all but completely taken over, vacuum tubes are still used in some specialist applications such as high power RF amplifiers, cathode ray tubes, specialist audio equipment, guitar amplifiers and some microwave devices. The 608 contained more than 3,000 germanium transistors, thomas J. Watson Jr. ordered all future IBM products to use transistors in their design. From that time on transistors were almost exclusively used for computer logic, circuits and components can be divided into two groups, analog and digital. A particular device may consist of circuitry that has one or the other or a mix of the two types, most analog electronic appliances, such as radio receivers, are constructed from combinations of a few types of basic circuits. Analog circuits use a range of voltage or current as opposed to discrete levels as in digital circuits. The number of different analog circuits so far devised is huge, especially because a circuit can be defined as anything from a single component, analog circuits are sometimes called linear circuits although many non-linear effects are used in analog circuits such as mixers, modulators, etc. Good examples of analog circuits include vacuum tube and transistor amplifiers, one rarely finds modern circuits that are entirely analog. These days analog circuitry may use digital or even microprocessor techniques to improve performance and this type of circuit is usually called mixed signal rather than analog or digital. Sometimes it may be difficult to differentiate between analog and digital circuits as they have elements of both linear and non-linear operation, an example is the comparator which takes in a continuous range of voltage but only outputs one of two levels as in a digital circuit
10.
Charles Tilston Bright
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Sir Charles Tilston Bright was a British electrical engineer who oversaw the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858, for which work he was knighted. Born on 8 June 1832 in Wanstead, Essex, Bright was educated at Merchant Taylors School, at fifteen he became a clerk for the Electric Telegraph Company and as his talent for electrical engineering became evident, he was appointed engineer to the Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1852. In that role he supervised the laying of lines in the British Isles and this work, and the successful laying of other submarine cables, suggested to others that it might be possible to lay a cable across the Atlantic from Ireland to North America. Samuel Canning supported the effort on board HMS Agamemnon, Bright was knighted in Dublin just a few days later. Sir Charles Bright emerged from the debacle with his reputation intact and went on to supervise the laying of successful cables in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf. Bright formed a partnership with Josiah Latimer Clark in 1861 and together they introduced numerous improvements in the manufacture, testing, in 1865 he was awarded a Telford Medal for a paper on the possibilities of submarine cable telegraphy from England to China and Australia. From 1865 to 1868 Bright was Liberal MP for Greenwich and in 1887 he was elected president of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, Bright died on 3 May 1888, at Abbey Wood, near London. His son Charles Bright was also a noted engineer and historian of the subject. Charles Tilston Brights son, also Charles Bright, followed in his fathers footsteps, in addition to cable engineering he was a pioneer in the use of radio as a communication device on both ships and planes. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1895, Charles Bright Leigh Rayments Historical List of MPs Notes Hansard 1803–2005, contributions in Parliament by Charles Tilston Bright Hounslow Guardian article
11.
Ionosphere
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The ionosphere is a region of Earths upper atmosphere, from about 60 km to 1,000 km altitude, and includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. It is ionized by radiation, plays an important part in atmospheric electricity. It has practical importance because, among other functions, it influences radio propagation to distant places on the Earth. The ionosphere is a shell of electrons and electrically charged atoms and molecules that surrounds the Earth and it owes its existence primarily to ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. The lowest part of the Earths atmosphere, the troposphere extends from the surface to about 10 km, above 10 km is the stratosphere, followed by the mesosphere. In the stratosphere incoming solar radiation creates the ozone layer, at heights of above 80 km, in the thermosphere, the atmosphere is so thin that free electrons can exist for short periods of time before they are captured by a nearby positive ion. The number of free electrons is sufficient to affect radio propagation. This portion of the atmosphere is ionized and contains a plasma which is referred to as the ionosphere, in this process the light electron obtains a high velocity so that the temperature of the created electronic gas is much higher than the one of ions and neutrals. The reverse process to ionization is recombination, in which an electron is captured by a positive ion. Recombination occurs spontaneously, and causes the emission of a photon carrying away the energy produced upon recombination, as gas density increases at lower altitudes, the recombination process prevails, since the gas molecules and ions are closer together. The balance between two processes determines the quantity of ionization present. Ionization depends primarily on the Sun and its activity, the amount of ionization in the ionosphere varies greatly with the amount of radiation received from the Sun. Thus there is an effect and a seasonal effect. The local winter hemisphere is tipped away from the Sun, thus there is less received solar radiation, the activity of the Sun is associated with the sunspot cycle, with more radiation occurring with more sunspots. Radiation received also varies with geographical location, there are also mechanisms that disturb the ionosphere and decrease the ionization. There are disturbances such as flares and the associated release of charged particles into the solar wind which reaches the Earth. At night the F layer is the layer of significant ionization present. During the day, the D and E layers become more heavily ionized, as does the F layer
12.
Ampere
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The ampere, often shortened to amp, is a unit of electric current. In the International System of Units the ampere is one of the seven SI base units and it is named after André-Marie Ampère, French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics. SI defines the ampere in terms of base units by measuring the electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current. The ampere was then defined as one coulomb of charge per second, in SI, the unit of charge, the coulomb, is defined as the charge carried by one ampere during one second. In the future, the SI definition may shift back to charge as the base unit, ampères force law states that there is an attractive or repulsive force between two parallel wires carrying an electric current. This force is used in the definition of the ampere. The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, is the quantity of electricity carried in 1 second by a current of 1 ampere, conversely, a current of one ampere is one coulomb of charge going past a given point per second,1 A =1 C s. In general, charge Q is determined by steady current I flowing for a time t as Q = It, constant, instantaneous and average current are expressed in amperes and the charge accumulated, or passed through a circuit over a period of time is expressed in coulombs. The relation of the ampere to the coulomb is the same as that of the watt to the joule, the ampere was originally defined as one tenth of the unit of electric current in the centimetre–gram–second system of units. That unit, now known as the abampere, was defined as the amount of current that generates a force of two dynes per centimetre of length between two wires one centimetre apart. The size of the unit was chosen so that the derived from it in the MKSA system would be conveniently sized. The international ampere was a realization of the ampere, defined as the current that would deposit 0.001118 grams of silver per second from a silver nitrate solution. Later, more accurate measurements revealed that this current is 0.99985 A, at present, techniques to establish the realization of an ampere have a relative uncertainty of approximately a few parts in 107, and involve realizations of the watt, the ohm and the volt. Rather than a definition in terms of the force between two current-carrying wires, it has proposed that the ampere should be defined in terms of the rate of flow of elementary charges. Since a coulomb is equal to 6. 2415093×1018 elementary charges. The proposed change would define 1 A as being the current in the direction of flow of a number of elementary charges per second. In 2005, the International Committee for Weights and Measures agreed to study the proposed change, the new definition was discussed at the 25th General Conference on Weights and Measures in 2014 but for the time being was not adopted. The current drawn by typical constant-voltage energy distribution systems is usually dictated by the power consumed by the system, for this reason the examples given below are grouped by voltage level
