Electric current with respect to ground. Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points. Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance, one arrives at the usual mathematical equation that describes this relationship: where "I" is the current through the conductor in units of amperes, "V" is the potential difference measured "across" the conductor in units of volts, and "R" is the resistance of the conductor in units of ohms. More specifically, Ohm's law states that the "R" in this relation is constant, independent of the current. In
Vacuum permittivity the system used to define the SI units. The new quantity "q" is given the name "rmks electric charge", or (nowadays) just "electric charge". Clearly, the quantity "q" used in the old cgs esu system is related to the new quantity "q" by One now adds the requirement that one wants force to be measured in newtons, distance in metres, and charge to be measured in the engineers' practical unit, the coulomb, which is defined as the charge accumulated when a current of 1 ampere flows for one second. This shows that the parameter "ε" should be allocated the unit