Voltage

I’m learning about circuits, those mainstays of our modern world, that act invisibly to bring magic to our lives. Lightning bound to earth. Potentials made manifest in power. Circuits are the way our world works, in more ways than one.

At its most basic, all of our technology works by letting electrons flow from areas of greater density to areas of less. As those electrons flow they heat things up by colliding with them. We can make things move by putting magnets near such a river and letting them get pushed away by the magnetic field that results, not dissimilar to a water wheel.

The parallels between electricity and water are actually quite striking. Both have currents that flow from higher pressure to lower. Both build up in pressure when blocked. In electricity we call this pressure “Voltage”

The more difficult something is to get through the more pressure builds up. We call this quality of being hard for electrons to move through “Resistance”

Current, abbreviated “I” for no apparent reason besides, perhaps, that Capacitors (C) were probably named first, makes up the third in the grand triad that underlies circuitry, and behaves just as you would expect a current to behave.

All circuits are combinations of these three things, in their inevitable relationship. V = I x R

As without. So within.

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Current

There is a river that runs behind all things. We float, half full vessels, separate but contained within the flow. Occasionally there are moments when we get  little more water inside. The psyche takes it and channels it through its internal circuit board, divine water transformed to holy fire.  

I remember the moments with every partner when I felt that opening.

Current appears when you have an excess of electrons.

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I am standing at a bus stop having missed the last bus. It’s Valentine's day. I spent the day with  M, walking along the Olympia coastline, and talking about all sorts of things. We went out to eat, asian food. I try to be manly and take the bill. M politely shows me how, a twinkle in their eyes.

Later I went to  a “We don’t have dates on valentine's day” party, the best of both worlds. Many hours later, spent playing a fixed version of tic-tac-toe, and listening to Stephen and his friend sing duets together, I run off to a bus.

Which I miss.

Leaving me standing, trying to hitchhike home. It’s eleven thirty. Not a good time.

As I consider my options, go back and crash on Stephen’s couch, call my housemate for a ride. I remember that M told me they would drive me home if ever I got stranded, just this afternoon.

It’s then that I know. Then that they become more than an option. They become inevitable.

We have current.

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Current comes in the quest for equality. A generator pushes electrons out of their comfortable spots, and as each one tries to get back home, they displace others, pushing in an endless cycle of of displacement.

As they face resistance they slow down, settle down, and find new homes. An engine is just a backwards generator.

What are our generators? What are our engines. Wherein does current arise?

Small moments with equal impact. I’m watching M get tea out of their kitchen closet. I say something, I forget what, and they laugh. Suddenly I know that I’ll do anything to make them laugh again.

Where did those electrons come from?

A compliment,

“I miss you. you're calming. I know I get defensive about sometimes needing to be brought down to another frequency but you're good at soothing me.” They don’t know that I copy it down and put it in a golden cage with the rest of the things I take out when I’m sad.

We’re still figuring out our currents, wiring together the circuit that is us. Connect two circuit boards and everything changes. Parallel resistances multiply.

When you’re designing circuits you want to keep things simple. One is designated as the “source” resistor, with ten times the resistance of the “load” - A modern relationship is more complicated. We struggle with equality, edge towards a shifting system centered around equilibrium. As I come together with them, I find myself changing. I find us different in conjunction.

We are still determining current. Still wiring the places where we connect. Every time we walk into a new situation, there’s a new connection. Somewhere in the circuit a resistor gets shorted - current flows through a new easier path in a rush, and edges towards new equality.

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Resistance

“What’s our struggle?” I ask M.

“What do you mean?”
“Every story, every relationship, has something it has to overcome - but in the act of overcoming it, the tension is lost. What’s ours?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.” they say.

If electricity is water, resistance is a dam. Behind the dam, water builds up, and water coming over has more power, pressure, potential.

In a wire without resistance, a “Superconductor,” current will run without cease, round and round in a circle. This is useful when you want the magnetic field moving electrons create, but not if you want to get work done.

Every piece of technology in a house is a resistor, moving stored power into work. A toaster takes current and curtails it, slowing it with endless collisions until it finally passes through, leaving heat in its wake. A lightbulb wastes light, a blender wastes movement.

The current doesn’t go away, just slows. Voltage piles up on the incoming side as electrons try to pass the resistance, and Power, an abstract idea of how much work we can do in how much time - is spent.

Resistance is exhausting, but necessary. Sometimes we put resistors in circuits just to block voltage from an area, where it might get to be too much. Sometimes we use them to create Voltage on the side where it builds up. Resistors come in all shapes and sizes. Diodes which let current in, but won’t let it out, capacitors which charge and discharge, Inductors which create magnetic fields - facilitators of movement.

What is our struggle, but also where are our edges? Where do we not want Voltage? Where would we prefer no more than a trickle of current? Resistance is a boundary, an edge that warns of its presence by the increasing pressure in the air.

Nothing is more important than boundaries. I thrive when they’re clear.

And real.

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In a circuit current originates from a known source in a known amount. Maybe you have a battery, electricity discharged from chemistry, or you plug into an outlet, some combination of coal, wind, sun and water.

But the amount you draw depends on the resistance of the load.

Boundaries allow more current to flow. They provide a container to let yourself feel, a safe edge to wander along. The more resistance in the system the more current is needed to push past, the more is drawn.

Resistance pulls energy to deal with it, whether energy is necessary or not. Energy that can be used for other things. Toasters say.

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Voltage

There are blood drives at the college, and whenever I have the time I try to make my way over. I’m always amazed when the people there remember me. Maybe I have a memorable name, but they must have hundreds moving through over the course of a day.

I love sitting in line, and waiting, nibbling on raisins after. There’s a camaraderie to losing blood together. Strangers talk to each other. Some to alleviate fear, others to calm their boredom. All of us swept a little outside the norm.

“I’m easy with blood.” In tell the man, dressed in his white coat, who I’ve never seen before.
“I guess I got lucky.”
We chatter about nothing. Calculus and how he wishes he’d taken it. His life and how it’s a between time. “Too much TV, I volunteer to take blood to get out, to feel like I’m doing something.

As he sticks his needles in, asking me again if I want to look away (I don’t) I watch with fascination as the clear plastic tubes begin to fill with my blood.

“How does that work? - is there a vacuum in the bag pulling my blood in?”
“No - you heart is doing all the work. It creates the blood pressure, that pushes it out of the body.

Suddenly I see my vascular system as a giant circuit. My heart the resistor, creating voltage differences between blood going out and blood coming in. My blood  like lightning coursing through my veins.

After he says I’m done, I get up and sit in the waiting area. Most people are dizzy or weak after having their blood drawn, I never am, but I do feel calm, voltage lower than is my norm.

There is nothing to calm and focus the mind, than blood being drawn elsewhere than the brain.

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Rarely is Voltage constant. In most of the world we work with what is called “alternating current,” sending the electricity first one way around the wire then the other.

This originates from the way electricity was first harnessed, with water wheels twisting a massive loop of wire through a magnet.

As the loop moves towards the magnet current runs one way, as the loop moves away it shifts into reverse, splashing back and forth, like water in a bathtub, always seeking equilibrium, but pushed by the magnet’s force.

Alternating current can be converted to direct current, an unchanging breed of voltage that’s easy to calculate and simple to work with, but we’ve decided not to go that rout. Even solar which comes out direct, gets shifted to alternating by blocking and releasing the flow.

While directness is a virtue, and simplicity is prefered, change ends up being worth the trouble.

When a current changes, the system again tries to reach equilibrium in a process called “magnetic flux.” That magnetic field that pushed all this into motion gets recreated wherever the change occurs to try and balance out that change. This in turn can begin more current flowing in other wires, reacting to the new magnet they sense outside.

It’s this quality of electricity that lets us send it great distances at awe striking voltages. Sneaking past the resistance of the wires, with only a trickle of current. It’s this alternating quality that builds up voltages in unconnected areas, lighting up the transformers that funnel lightning into our homes.

With alternating current it is not the total voltage that matters, it could be ten volts or ten thousand, it’s the amount it’s changing that has an effect.

It doesn’t matter how much love is present. You feel the amount it changes by.

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As I toss and turn, unconsciously pulling M closer as I get cold, pushing them away as I warm, but mostly pulling as they’ve stolen the blankets, I dream about a circuit.

I’m trying to design it. Putting in resistors to see if they work, and watching to see how it affects the system. It’s complicated but I know exactly what I want it to do, if only I can do the math. I crunch my brow in my sleep trying to make the numbers fit together. Resistances in series make this much voltage. We have this much current. Lining it up.

But it’s not that simple. The voltage isn’t constant. Now it’s high and now it’s low as the current into the circuit rises and falls in some subterranean cycle I can only begin to see. And maybe some of these resistors are mislabeled, and maybe my Op-amp is backwards, and is this thing even plugged in?

But if I can only understand it this circuit will do great things. If I can only avoid frying a resistor with too much voltage, if I can keep enough voltage to make it go, if I can figure out how all the pieces fit together . . .

I pull M closer - knowing that a property of circuits are their tendency towards different colored eyes.

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I’m walking my slow walk from class, enjoying the sunlight for a brief moment before I’ll have to plunge indoors again and face the endless homework that awaits me. I’m thinking about M of course, wondering if I ask them to spend time more than they ask me. Wondering if they’re being subtle and I should cut back on the asking.

And then I realize that I trust them. That if they don’t want to spend time with me they’ll say. I realize that I don’t need to worry because they have good boundaries, and while I shouldn’t blunder into those boundaries I don’t need to tiptoe either.

“Oh - they have working circuitry. That’s good” I think.

And it is.