Ohm’s Law and the Power Law

John Kangwon Lee, Zihan Liu

October 2023

1 Introduction
Ohm’s law states that the voltage and current through a resistor are related by the equation
V = IR. Using Ohm’s law and the theory of blackbody radiation, it is possible to derive
an approximate relationship between voltage and current for an incandescent lightbulb with
a tungsten filament that is connected to a power source: I ∝ V 3/5 . We conducted two
experiments to assess the validity of these two laws.

2 Methods and Procedures

The objective of the first experiment was to test Ohm’s law and obtain a reasonable value
for the resistance of a resistor and a potentiometer. To do this, we first built a circuit in
which a power source applied a voltage across a resistor, which was connected in series to an
ammeter and in parallel to a voltmeter. The ammeter and voltmeter were both Keysight’s
U1272A multimeter. A schematic diagram is shown below.

Figure 1: A schematic diagram of the circuit used to test Ohm’s law

The voltage applied across the circuit by the power source was 7 V initially, and was incre-
mented by 1 V until we had 10 measurements of the voltage and current across the resistor.
Then, we directly connected an ohmmeter (identical multimeter) to the resistor to measure
its resistance. Next, the resistor was switched out by a potentiometer of unknown resistance,
and the same process was applied from 10 V to 19 V .
The objective of the second experiment was to test the power law described in the introduc-
tion. The same circuit used in the first experiment was used, with an incandescent lightbulb
with a tungsten filament taking the place of the resistor. The initial voltage was set to be
5 V , and the voltage was incremented by 1 V until 16 measurements of voltage and current
were made.

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3 Results of Experiment 1
The voltages and currents measured from the resistor and potentiometer were organized into
txt files included in the appendix. The uncertainties of the measured voltages and currents
were calculated by combining the error of accuracy and the error of precision given by the
specification sheet for the multimeter in quadrature:
q
u = u2a + u2p

From the voltage and currents measured, the resistances of each conductor were calculated
via a manipulation of Ohm’s law, R = V /I. The uncertainty on each resistance obtained
via this way was calculated as the following:
r 
uV 2  uI 2
uR = R +
V I
The mean of these resistances and its uncertainty were calculated by the following equation:
N N
1 X 1 X
R̄ = Rk uR̄ = (uRk )2
N k=1 N k=1

The mean resistance calculated this way was R̄res = (100.2 ± 0.07) Ω for the resistor, and
R̄pot = (770.9 ± 0.9) Ω for the potentiometer. To investigate the relationship between voltage
and current within these two circuits, we also plotted the data on a current-voltage plane
and used the curve fit function from the scipy.optimize library to fit two linear models
y = Ax and y = Ax+B hypothesized by Ohm’s law for each conductor. V = RI tells us that
the slopes of the fitted lines will be an approximation of the resistances of the conductors,
and that B ≈ 0.

Figure 2: The relationship between voltage and current through each conductor

The goodness of fit of the fitted models were evaluated via the χ2r - statistics of each fit,
organized in the table below. One aspect of the calculation to note is that instead of the
measurement errors on voltage, the standard error of voltage was used, primarily because the
measurements errors were too small compared to the magnitude of the voltage measurements

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made, which results in an unreasonably large chi-squared reduced statistic. The table also
includes the best estimate of the parameters (and their errors) involved in the linear fits
of the data. Hence we have two additional measures of the resistance of each conductor,
Rres ≈ (100.1 ± 0.02) Ω, Rpot ≈ (769.9 ± 0.1) Ω (which are from the y = Ax fit of the data)
and Rres ≈ (100.5 ± 0.07) Ω, Rpot ≈ (726.6 ± 0.6) Ω (which are from the y = Ax + B fit of
the data).

Resistor Potentiometer
y = Ax y = Ax + B y = Ax y = Ax + B
χ2r 0.001 0.001 0.04 0.002
A 100.1 100.5 769.9 726.6
σA 0.02 0.07 0.1 0.6
B N/A -0.04 N/A 0.8
σB N/A 0.007 N/A 0.01

Table 1: χ2r and parameter estimates for the linear fits of the voltage-current data

Moreover, the ohmmeter measurements of the resistances of the resistor and the potentiome-
ter were found to be Rres ≈ (99.46 ± 0.2) Ω and Rpot ≈ (765.3 ± 1.5) Ω, respectively. The
manufacturer bands on the resistor provided an additional measurement of its resistance:
Rres ≈ (100 ± 5) Ω. The uncertainty on this measurement was provided by the resistor band
convention shown in the appendix.

4 Results of Experiment 2
The voltages and currents measured from the lightbulb circuit were organized into txt files
included in the appendix. The uncertainties of the measured voltages and currents were
calculated the same way as in experiment 1. To analyze the relationship between current
and voltage, we plotted the data on a voltage-current plane, and fit a nonlinear model
y = CxD (provided by the theory of blackbody radiation) to the data. We also took the
logarithm of both the current and the voltage to linearize this model - hence we fit the data
to a second linear model y = Ax + B, wherein the independent variable was log(V ) and the
dependent variable log(I). The uncertainties produced with the logarithmic transformation
of the data was calculated using the following equation, applying both to voltage and current:
 
1 V + uV
ulog(V ) = log
2 V − uV

The plot showing the relationship between current and voltage also includes the theoretical
curve, given by I = 0.0056V 3/5 .

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 Figure 3: The relationship between voltage and current through the lightbulb

The goodness of fit of each of these models were assess by the χ2r statistics - these and the
optimal parameters generated by curve fit are collected in the table below:
y = Ax + B y = AxB
χ2r 0.009 0.01
A 0.6 0.006
σA 0.002 0.00003
B -5.2 0.6
σB 0.005 0.002

Table 2: χ2r and parameter estimates for the linear, nonlinear fits of the current-voltage data

5 Analysis/Discussion
In the first experiment, we see that the linear model provided by Ohm’s law is a good fit
to the data obtained, since the χ2r statistics provided in table one are all very close to 0.
This implies that the number of measurements that were taken during the experiment may
not have been sufficiently large. The χ2r for the two linear models for the resistor data are
very close in value, implying both models were equally potent. However, the χ2r value for
the linear model for the potentiometer passing through the origin was closer to 1 than was
the χ2r value for the model which did not pass through the origin - hence, in this case, the
former model seems to be more accurate. In our results, the values of B were close to 0, but
considering the uncertainties on the parameters, they could not have been precisely 0, which
does not seem to agree with Ohm’s law.
The estimates of the resistance of the resistor from the curve fitting was, within uncertainty,
equal to that provided by the manufacturer, but unequal to the ohmmeter measurement -
this is likely due to the fact that the ohmmeter circuit had less contact points as compared
to the complete circuit in which voltage and current data was collected. Moreover, the
estimate provided by the manufacturer had a large uncertainty, thus permitting a larger
range of resistance estimates, whether it be an overestimate or underestimate.

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The estimate of the resistance of the potentiometer from the y = Ax model, though very
close, did not agree to the measurement given by the ohmmeter within uncertainty - this
is likely due to the same reason the resistances disagreed for the resistor. The resistance
provided by the y = Ax + B model, however, was extremely different (±30 Ω) from that
of the ohmmeter measurement or the estimate of the alternate model, thus evidencing the
weakness of the model.
For the second experiment, since we are assessing the validity of the relationship I ∝ V 3/5 ,
we shall not be too concerned with the constant B in the model y = Ax + B and with the
constant A in the model y = AxB . Notice that the linear fit for the logarithm of current
and voltage give as its first parameter A a measure of the exponent on the nonlinear model
(i.e. A = D). If we then look at the powers on V produced by each model, we have
0.6 ± 0.002 from the linear model and 0.6 ± 0.002 from the nonlinear model. Hence both
regression methods produced, within uncertainty, the ”correct” value of the power on V .
Also, the fit themselves prove to be very accurate as their χ2r values are very close to 0 -
again, this could imply that the sample size was not large enough, or that our multimeters
had uncertainties which were too large so as to accomodate for a wide range of parameters.
Hence, the second experiment agrees to a large extent with the equation provided by the
blackbody approximation.

6 References

7 Appendix
[1] First Experiment Data for the Resistor: https://bit.ly/3ZJAYsq
[2] First Experiment Data for the Potentiometer: https://bit.ly/3LQuAtU
[3] Second Experiment Data: https://bit.ly/3tf0Sbi
Python code and analysis written by Zihan. LATEX writeup and the other parts done by
John.