Electric current is the organized flow of electric charge through a material or space over time. In everyday circuits this charge is usually carried by electrons moving through metal wires, but in other situations it can be carried by ions in a liquid, or by both ions and electrons in a gas or plasma.

Even though the individual charged particles move quite slowly on average, the “signal” that tells them to start moving travels very quickly through the circuit, so the effect of turning on a switch is felt almost instantly throughout the connected components.

The size of a current tells you how much charge passes a given point each second, and it is expressed in amperes, a unit that indicates how intense the flow is: a tiny electronic sensor may use a very small current, while a household appliance draws a much larger one.

Current always needs a complete path, often called a closed circuit, and some form of energy source that can set charges in motion; without both of these, charges simply remain in random thermal motion and no net current is established.

Engineers and physicists also distinguish between the direction that positive charge would flow (the conventional current direction used in circuit diagrams) and the actual motion of negative electrons in many conductors, which is opposite to that arrow, but both descriptions represent the same physical transfer of charge.

Voltage, often called electric potential difference, describes how much “electrical push” or “pressure” exists between two points in a circuit or an electric field.

It tells you how much energy would be gained or lost by a unit of charge moved from one point to the other, so a higher voltage means each charge carrier has more energy available to do things like light a bulb, drive a motor, or power a microchip.

Because it is defined between two locations, voltage is always relative: a battery, for example, provides a fixed difference between its terminals, and that difference is what can drive current through any device connected across them. You can picture voltage somewhat like the height difference in a water system: water stored higher up can flow down and turn a turbine, just as charges at a higher electric potential can “fall” through a circuit element and deliver energy.

In practical circuits, sources such as batteries, generators, and power supplies maintain specific voltage differences, while components like resistors, LEDs, and integrated circuits are designed to operate correctly only within certain voltage ranges. Together, voltage and current describe how electrical energy is distributed and transferred in a system: voltage sets up the conditions for movement, and current is the resulting motion of charge responding to that electric push.

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