@s0 @starkatt @LexYeen uhg okay getting overwhelmed again, let me see if i follow so far

voltage is just how different the positive/negative ends are so it's how violent the reaction is

amperage is the "volume" of electricity that you get by calculating voltage and resistance i guess??? and amp-hours are like "if you discharged this whole battery in one hour, it'd be this many amps"

watts are uhhhhhh

@kat @s0 @LexYeen yeah exactly!

@starkatt @s0 @LexYeen okay cool everything i find describes amps as like a totally separate thing from voltage so knowing one's a function of the other helps a lot, phew

@starkatt @s0 @LexYeen except amps being a function of volts makes it seem weird that watts are a function of amps and volts

nvm i'm lost again

@kat @starkatt @LexYeen current is a function of voltage *and other things*; 5 V across a 5 Ω resistor gives you 1 A, and consequently 5 W of heat being produced in the resistor, but 5 V across a 10 Ω resistor gives you 0.5 A, and consequently 2.5 W of heat
-F

@starkatt @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen

following so far, i'm just not really sure what different thing amps and watts are measuring if amps are already a product of voltage/resistance

like i guess by the time you get to watts you've multiplied by voltage twice??? i'm not sure why really

@starkatt @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen like if you lower voltage and resistance together it'd be like going from a pressure washer with a compressor to a garden hose or something

they're both gonna fill up a bucket at the same rate so the amperage is the same

and then... i'm not sure what wattage is equivalent to here, but i guess it's different for each?? or the same???

@kat @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen So like,

You can get a given power in two ways: high voltage and low amperage, or high amperage and low voltage.

the first is like a waterjet cutter. It'd take ages to fill a swimming pool but it's at wicked high pressure.

the second is like a slow-moving river. The sheer volume of flowing water means there's a ton of energy there, but it's being driven by a nearly-imperceptible contour of the landscape.

@kat @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen resistance is like -- for the cutter all the water has to go through this tiny orifice, but for the river there's nearly nothing in the way.

@kat @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen you could conceivably have an entire river per second worth of water being moved at the pressure of a waterjet cutter, but the driving pump would need to be preposterous.

@starkatt @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen so like one's high voltage and high resistance, one's low voltage and low resistance

it's the same amount of water we'll say, it's a very tiny river, so the same amperage, so they'd fill a bucket at the same rate

so does wattage measure something other than just volume?? i guess they'd both output the same volume but one's harder to plug up than the other

@kat @s0 @Felthry @LexYeen the waterjet cutter is high voltage, high resistance, low current. X power

The river is low voltage, low resistance, high current. Also X power.