Electric Power Systems
A Conceptual Introduction
Chapter One
The Physics of Electricity
1.1 BASIC QUANTITIES
1.1.1 Introduction
This chapter describes the quantities that are essential to our understanding of electricity:
charge, voltage, current, resistance, and electric and magnetic fields. Most
students of science and engineering find it very hard to gain an intuitive appreciation
of these quantities, since they are not part of the way we normally see and make
sense of the world around us. Electrical phenomena have a certain mystique that
derives from the difficulty of associating them with our direct experience, but also
from the knowledge that they embody a potent, fundamental force of nature.
Electric charge is one of the basic dimensions of physical measurement, along
with mass, distance, time and temperature. All other units in physics can be
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