Chapter 10. Direct-Current Circuits
10.1 Electromotive Force
Learning Objectives
By the end of the section, you will be able to:
- Describe the electromotive force (emf) and the internal resistance of a battery
- Explain the basic operation of a battery
If you forget to turn off your car lights, they slowly dim as the battery runs down. Their gradual dimming implies that the battery output voltage decreases as the battery is depleted. The reason for the decrease in output voltage for depleted batteries is that all voltage sources have two fundamental parts—a source of electrical energy and an internal resistance. In this section, we examine the energy source and the internal resistance.
Introduction to Electromotive Force
Voltage has many sources, a few of which are shown in Figure 10.2. All such devices create a potential difference and can supply current if connected to a circuit. A special type of potential difference is known as electromotive force (emf). The emf is not a force at all, but the term ‘electromotive force’ is used for historical reasons. It was coined by Alessandro Volta in the 1800s, when he invented the first battery, also known as the voltaic pile. Because the electromotive force is not a force, it is common to refer to these sources simply as sources of emf (pronounced as the letters “ee-em-eff”), instead of sources of electromotive force.
If the electromotive force is not a force at all, then what is the emf and what is a source of emf? To answer these questions, consider a simple circuit of a 12-V lamp attached to a 12-V battery, as shown in Figure 10.3. The battery can be modeled as a two-terminal device that keeps one terminal at a higher electric potential than the second terminal. The higher electric potential is sometimes called the positive terminal and is labeled with a plus sign. The lower-potential terminal is sometimes called the negative terminal and labeled with a minus sign. This is the source of the emf.
When the emf source is not connected to the lamp, there is no net flow of charge within the emf source. Once the battery is connected to the lamp, charges flow from one terminal of the battery, through the lamp (causing the lamp to light), and back to the other terminal of the battery. If we consider positive (conventional) current flow, positive charges leave the positive terminal, travel through the lamp, and enter the negative terminal.
Positive current flow is useful for most of the circuit analysis in this chapter, but in metallic wires and resistors, electrons contribute the most to current, flowing in the opposite direction of positive current flow. Therefore, it is more realistic to consider the movement of electrons for the analysis of the circuit in Figure 10.3. The electrons leave the negative terminal, travel through the lamp, and return to the positive terminal. In order for the emf source to maintain the potential difference between the two terminals, negative charges (electrons) must be moved