Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Hi Rich,
I dunno -- that doesn't sound right. Volts X Amps = Watts is what I was taught.
|
That's right.
A volt is a potential. It's kinda like air pressure in a tire.
It's at 44 PSI, but it's not doing any work, it's just sitting there.
An Amp is not the same thing. It's the amount (count) of electrons that flow past a point(like an Amp Meter) in a circuit for one second.
Like water flowing in a hose.. The Amp meter is like the GPM meter on a fire engine. Only, it's coulombs per second.
If you have a 12V battery and 6 ohm soldering iron, that iron is going to draw 2 Amps off the battery. V/R=A or (I=E/R)
The iron will heat up and output 24 watts of heat,
every single second. (current squared times the resistance in ohms).
If you only turned on the iron for 1/2 a second, it would dissipate 12 watts (as heat).
If you sat there flipping the switch off 1 sec and back on 1 sec repeatedly,
the average wattage(over time) used by the iron would be 12W.