Metrication in the United States There are no U.S. customary units for electric current, potential difference, or charge since these concepts were developed after the international adoption of metric in science. The metric units ampere, volt, ohm and coulomb are the only units used. The SI term hertz has replaced the term "cycles per second" as a unit of frequency. Energy is often measured in watt hours, BTUs, therms or calories rather than the SI joule. Residential and commercial electrical energy use is metered and billed in kilowatt hours, kW·h, as in most metric countries. Force measurements regularly use the pound instead of the SI
Current density law (one of Maxwell's equations), which relates current density to magnetic field. In special relativity theory, charge and current are combined into a 4-vector. Charge carriers which are free to move constitute a free current density, which are given by expressions such as those in this section. Electric current is a coarse, average quantity that tells what is happening in an entire wire. At position r at time "t", the "distribution" of charge flowing is described by the current density: where J(r, "t") is the current density vector, v(r, "t") is the particles' average drift velocity (SI unit: m∙s), and