Quantities and Units

Lecture-01
 Objectives

1. Define electrical quantities.

2. Define electrical quantities.
3. Explain Engineering Notation.
4. Discuss Metric Prefixes used in electrical engineering
and their conversion.
Electrical Quantities

• Voltage, Current and Resistance are the basic electrical

quantities present in all electrical circuit
Ampere :
is the amount of electricity flowing through a circuit.
Volt
• Potential difference or electromotive force (EMF)
between two points of a conducting wire
• The letter E, which stands for EMF, or the letter V,
which stands for volt, can be used to represent
voltage in an algebraic formula.
Ohm
• Ohm is the unit of resistance to current flow.
• Ohm is the amount of resistance that allows one ampere
of current to flow when the applied voltage is one volt.
• The symbol used to represent an ohm, or resistance, is the
Greek letter omega (Ω).
• The letter R, which stands for resistance, is used to
represent ohms in an algebraic formula.
• The symbol for resistance used in electronic circuits is shown
below:
 Watt
• Wattage is a measure of the amount of power that is
being used in a circuit.
• In an algebraic formula, wattage is generally
represented either by the letter P, for power.

746 Watts = One H.P.

 Units
• Measurements are made with respect to a standard which
defines a unit.
• How far/big? [m]
• How much time [s]
• How much current [Amp]
• How much resistance [Ohm]
• How much voltage [V]
Scientific Notation
Scientific Notation:
is a conventional method to express large
and small numbers and to perform calculations involving
such numbers.
 Scientific Notation

Examples:

200,000 is expressed as 2 x 105

0.00022 is expressed as 2.2 x 10-4

Engineering Notation
• Engineering notation is like Scientific Notation, but in Engineering
notation a number can have from 1 to 3 digits to the left of the decimal
point and the power-of-ten exponent must be a multiple of three.

Example:
86,000 in Engineering notation is expressed as 86 x 103

In Scientific notation 86,000 is expressed as 8.6 x 104

Metric Prefixes
Metric Prefixes symbols are used in conjunction with engineering notation as a
“short hand” for the certain powers of ten that are used.
Metric Prefixes

• Metric prefix is used to replace the power of ten in a number that is

expressed in engineering notation.
• Metric prefixes are used only with numbers that have a unit of measure, such
as voltage or current.

Example:

25 x 10-3 A, using metric prefixes

is expressed as 25 mA.
Examples
• Convert 0.35 mA to µA
• Convert 1500 µA to mA
• Convert 0.0022 µF to pF
• Convert 7100 kΩ to MΩ
• Convert 33 V to KV
• Convert 3.4 KΩ to Ω
Precision

Precision refers to how well a quantity can be

determined.

Example
Precision - I measure the length of an object with a
ruler and I am confident that my measured value, in
meters, is correct to 3 decimal places. I can now say
that my measurement has a precision of 1mm.