The Joule's law reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Joule's law

Joule's law (due to James Prescott Joule) expresses the amount of heat generated by an electrical resistor, and is expressed by the relation

Q is proportional to

by current I flowing through a resistor with resistance R for a time t, and Q is the heat generated

or

where k is the constant of proportionality, dependent on the units used to express I, R and t. If amperes, ohms, and seconds are used, and the result expressed in joules, it is simply 1.

This is the "Joule's law" reference article from the English Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.