Lab Report

Verification of Ohm's Law

Botond Tölgyesi
Physics Student in BME

4 November 2009

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1 Object:

To study Ohm's law for DC circuits, to learn basic construction and

measurement of electric circuits, to learn curve fitting and basic error
analysis.

2 Equipment Used:

2 HAMEG 9674F multimeter (includes milliammeter, voltmeter),

connecting wires and jumper leads, POPPER DC power supply, three
resistances: 10Ω , 50Ω and 100Ω

3 Introduction:

Electrical current:
Electrical current is the amount of charge passing by a given point in
a conducting path (circuit) per unit time: I= dQ/dt. The unit of current is the
Ampere, which is equal to a (Coulomb/second). It is agreed for convenience
that the direction of the current is the same as the direction of movement of
positive charges in electric field. The actual flow of charge in most
conductors consists of electrons. So, by this convention used by most
physicists and engineers, the direction of current flow is actually opposite
the to actual flow of charges.

Voltage Difference:
The voltage difference ∆V ≡VB −VA between points A and B is
defined to be the negative of the work done ∆W per charge, q, in moving
the charge, q , from any point A to any point B: ∆V=∆W/q
Voltage difference is also called electric potential difference. The unit of
voltage difference is the volt [V ].

[V ]=[volt ]=[ joule / coulomb] =[J / C].

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Voltage Sources:
Batteries, generators, power supplies are devices that convert some
other form of energy into electrical energy. When the terminals of the
power supply are connected to a wire, forces act on charges, and produce a
flow of charge in the wire, an electric current.

Ohm’s law:
The relationship between the voltage, current, and resistance in a
metallic conductor is given by Ohm's law. It states as follows: If the
temperature and other physical conditions of a metallic conductor are
unchanged, the ratio of the potential difference across the conductor (V) to
the current (I) is a constant. This constant ratio (R) is the resistance of the
conductor.

V
R=
I
If potential difference is measured in Volts and current is in
Amperes, resistance will be in Ohms (unit of resistance, equal to one Volt
per Ampere).

4 Procedure:

In this experiment, I connected a circuit as shown in Fig.1. The

milliammater has to connected as a series element, and the voltmeter as a
parallel element. The voltage could be measured across any two points by
touching the points with the two leads of the voltmeter. As voltage source I
used a DC power supply, its voltage could be changed between 0V and
50V.

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 I measured the current for 10 different voltages, with the increment
of 1V, between 1V and 11V. I had 3 different resistance (A, B, C), so I
made 30 record in the experiment. I recorded the current and voltage data-
pairs and the instrumental error of the measurements. The instrumental
error is taken as 1/2 of the smallest division on the scale of the analog
device.

Note: The voltages to be used in this experiment are completely harmless

to people. However, the equipment can be damaged by improper use.

5 Results and Discussion:

This section analyses the results of the experiment. The measured voltage
and current events appear in Table 1 of the Appendix. In the experiment
there were three different, potencial errorsources, which I can calculate:
• First of all I have to calculate with the incremental resistance of the
wires and leads. With an Ohmmeter I measured this resistances and
after the experiment I calculated with it.
• Second of all the resistances are changing if the temperature is not
invariable. Through the experiment the laboratory’s temperature
was constant.
• And finally the measurement devices, especially the milliammeter
give always systematic error. The millammeter gives more error, if
the measured value is less than approx 100mA.

The Appendix includes all of the calculations and calibrating equations.

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 From the values of voltage and current, a graph between these was
created in Fig 2.A), 2.B), 2.C) . As can be seen from the graph, the
relationship of voltage and current is linear.
The best way to calculate the resistance from the experimental datas
is using an Analyses Program like Origin, and the program can fit linear
curve to the data-points. If the graph shows the current versus voltage, the
gradient (M) of the linear curve is the reciproc of the resistance. If I
compare the value of the experimental and ideal resistance, I do not see
serious difference between those.

6 Conclusion

I could say, the experiment as the verification of Ohm’s law, also the
determination of the unknown resistances was successful. But no
experiment can be perfect. The causes of differences may be the following:
• When the measurements were taken, they were still changing.
Possibly this was due to changing temperature of the resistors, which
would lead to varying resistances. In a more careful experiment, a
longer wait might have countered this effect.
• Recording directly the temperature of the resistor would be useful,
although self-heating of the resistors would likely be a more
significant effect, like the action of the ambient temperature.
• Ohms' law is an idealization. Possibly there is an unknown effect
contributing to the deviation of our data from Ohm's law, e.g. my
resistors are not ideal, metallic implements.

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A Appendix

This appendix presents the data, calculations, and graphs from the
experiment to verify Ohm’s law. The first two columns of Table 1. show
the measured voltages (V) and current (I) data-pairs. The second two
columns show the calculated values of the power (P) of the power supply
and the resistance (R) from each line. The equations are:
P=V·I ; R=V/I .

To calibrate the resistance to the right value, considering the aforsaid

errorsourses, I used the following equation:
Rreal= (R – Rwire) [1 +α (T − To )],
where Rreal is the resistance in 23°C (offical room-temperature); R is the
resistance from Vmeasured/Imeasured ; Rwire is the resistance of the wires and
leads; T is the actual temperature, T0 = 23°C and α is the temperature
coefficient of the resistor’s material.
The gradient from the linear fitting can be seen on the graph (e.g.
y=0,0993x), where y is the current, x is the voltage and the number is the
gradient (M). The resistance: Rfit = 1 / M.

Figure 1. The connected curcuit

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Table 1. Data From Experiment and Calculation
Device Voltmeter Millammeter Power supply Resistor
Resistance one by Resistance from
Voltage (V) Current (I) Power (P=VI) one (Rreal) linear fitting (Rfit)
[V] [mA] [W] [Ω] [Ω]
1,02 98 0,100 10,408
2,06 194 0,400 10,619
3,10 314 0,973 9,873
4,05 385 1,559 10,519
A 5,00 478 2,390 10,460
6,03 594 3,582 10,152 10,07
Orig.: 10Ω 7,12 701 4,991 10,157
7,89 773 6,099 10,207
9,04 894 8,082 10,112
9,99 985 9,840 10,142
10,91 1084 11,826 10,065
0,98 17 0,017 57,647
2,10 38 0,080 55,263
2,98 54 0,161 55,185
4,07 77 0,313 52,857
B 5,01 95 0,476 52,737
6,07 115 0,698 52,783 50,25
Orig.: 50Ω 6,95 134 0,931 51,866
7,99 157 1,254 50,892
8,96 178 1,595 50,337
10,13 201 2,036 50,398
11,02 214 2,358 51,495
1,02 9 0,009 113,333
2,10 19 0,040 110,526
3,10 29 0,090 106,897
4,07 38 0,155 107,105
C 4,88 46 0,224 106,087
6,07 59 0,358 102,881 102,04
Orig.: 100Ω 7,12 70 0,498 101,714
7,99 78 0,623 102,436
9,04 87 0,786 103,908
10,13 99 1,003 102,323
10,98 107 1,175 102,617

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 Resistance A
y = 0,0993x
1,2

0,8
Current (A)

0,6

0,4

0,2

0
0,00 2,00 4,00 6,00 8,00 10,00 12,00
Voltage (V)

Figure 2. A) Current versus Voltage, as measured on the Resistor A

Resistance B

y = 0,0199x
0,25

0,2
Current (A)

0,15

0,1

0,05

0
0,00 2,00 4,00 6,00 8,00 10,00 12,00
Voltage (V)

Figure 2. B) Current versus Voltage, as measured on the Resistor B

Resistance C
y = 0,0098x
0,12

0,1

0,08
Current (A)

0,06

0,04

0,02

0
0,00 2,00 4,00 6,00 8,00 10,00 12,00
Voltage (V)

Figure 2. C) Current versus Voltage, as measured on the Resistor C

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