Re: Favorite Test Questions

["Rick Tarara" <rbtarara@sprynet.com>]

A semantic swamp for sure!  On a recent quiz you would have been marked
wrong if you answered V/I when asked 'On what does the resistance of an
object depend."  Bob probably would not answer V/I but his statement below
'V/I defines R' would certainly suggest such an answer.  For me, R is
defined by it's dependence on Length, Cross-Sectional Area, material, and
temperature.  The latter two are combined into Resistivity.  Ohm's law is
(IMO) most properly written as I = V/R since this operationally determines
the amount of current which is the most likely reason for doing a _real_
calculation.  (Of course, we all know that the three most important
equations in electricity/electronics are I=V/R, V=RI, and R=V/I ;-)

rick

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Sciamanda <trebor@velocity.net>


> This is another semantic swamp!
> I have always considered R=V / I to be the definition of resistance -
> period.
> I never refer to any statement as "Ohm's Law" (except perhaps to
> discourage its utterance).