Ohm's Lore Trivia Quiz

Answer: V=IR

Yes, we needed to get that out of the way right off the bat.
Ohm's law states that the current flow through a conductor is directly proportional to the potential difference (voltage) and inversely proportional to the resistance.

I=Current flow V=potential and R=Resistance.

Answer: The amount of electric current through a metal conductor in a circuit is directly proportional to the voltage impressed across it, for any given temperature.

It was surprisingly difficult to find a non-geek explanation of Ohm's law, so thank you to www.opamp-electronics.com for the correct answer.

The laminar flow statement illustrates Poiseuille's Law, which is comparable to Ohm's law except that Ohm's concerns electricity and Poiseuille's is about fluids. (Got that? Great.)

The statement about electric flux is Gauss' Law.

Bernoulli's fluid dynamics principle is from www.absoluteastronomy.com's list of eponymous scientific laws, which make fascinating reading.

Answer: The Greek letter "Omega"

Ohms are symbolized by the upper-case Greek letter omega. Although most Greek letters have been commandeered for use by scientists, omicron has mostly escaped this fate because it resembles an "O" and would be confusing in formulae.

Answer: Joseph and Michael

The unit of inductance is called the henry, after Joseph Henry (1797-1878), American physicist and first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
The unit of capacitance is called the farad, after Michael Faraday (1791-1867), British inventor of the electric motor, the dynamo, the transformer, and the generator.
One farad is equivalent to one coulomb of stored charge per volt of applied potential difference.

(Are you wondering what a coulomb is? Have you ever also wondered what the name of one unit of trivia is? Yes, these are things that make you go "Ohmmmm"...)

Answer: Siemens

Mho is the the inverse of a resistance, in other words 1/r. If we look at our now-familiar formula
V=IR,
we see that it could also be configured as

I=V/r = I=V*(1/r), which is I=V*Mho

German electrical engineer Werner von Siemens did some studies with this and the unit was renamed after him.
(It is interesting to note that while the unit is now called a siemens, "mho" is still a viable Scrabble word, and I encourage its use as such.)

Answer: 1820: Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison commence their famous AC/DC feud

Oersted first demonstrated electromagnetism in 1820.

Within a few months, Ampère, studying Oersted's work, formulated his law of electromagnetism (Ampère's law) that describes mathematically the magnetic force between two electric currents.

The first galvanometer (a tool for measuring the strength and direction of electric current) was built in Germany by Johann S. Schweigger in 1820, but Johann Poggendorff of Berlin and James Cumming in Cambridge, England built theirs at almost the same time.

Tesla and Edison's "War of Currents", while very real and historically fascinating, didn't take place until the late 1880s.

Answer: An insulator

Almost any substance will conduct electricity if the voltage is high enough, but insulators will...well...resist longer.

Answer: They have different resistances depending on which way the current is flowing through them

Ohmic (obedient Ohm's law-abiding) materials produce linear current-voltage graphs; in nonohmic materials, the resistance is not constant.

For ohmic materials, the resistance is the inverse of the slope of the straight line. (I put that in for all you math geeks out there. I got it from www.launc.tased.edu.au/online/sciences/PhysSci/done/electric/resistnc/Resistance.htm. Enjoy.)

Answer: 10 amps

Remember: Ohm's law is V=IR where V is voltage, current is I and R is resistance (also known as impedance).

If the voltage is 10 and the light has an impedance of 1 and we know that current is denoted as I, we get the following equation 10=I X 1. I therefore equals 10.

Answer: Swift

Voltage and current were considered to be unrelated phenomena before Ohm realized that if he were to take a similar wire of twice the size the current would divide in half. Although this is amazingly simple to prove with resistors today, it took the scientific community of Ohm's time more than ten years to believe.

Satirist Johnathan Swift's quote is from his 1711 "Thoughts on Various Subjects". I hope this quiz on Ohm and various other subjects has been enjoyable; please don't bypass my others!