Ampere Ampere The ampere (; symbol: A), often shortened to "amp", is the base unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI). It is named after André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836), French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics. The International System of Units defines the ampere in terms of other base units by measuring the electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current. The earlier CGS measurement system had two different definitions of current, one essentially the same as the SI's and the other using electric charge as the base unit, with the unit of charge defined by
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