Charge and current

As you already know electric charge in a solid is carried by particles called electrons. One electron has a very tiny charge and so for practical measurement of electric charge we use units called COULOMBS.

A coulomb (C) is an AMOUNT of electric charge in just the same way that a litre is an AMOUNT of water.

One coulomb is the charge of roughly six million million million electrons!

The movement of this charge round a circuit is called the electric current.

Electric current is the rate of flow of charge round a circuit. The current at a point in the circuit is the amount of charge that passes that point in one second.

Electric current is measured in AMPERES (AMPS, symbol A).

You may meet smaller currents than one amp in school. For these currents we use milliamps and microamps.
1 A = 1000 milliamp (mA)
1 A = 1 000 000 microamps (mA)

Currents of millions of amps are used in fusion reactors, lightning is thousands of amps, currents of around an amp or so flow in light bulbs, currents in an electric clock will be milliamps and electronic circuits operate on currents of a few microamps.