# BASIC ELECTRICITY 1

A simple analogy will help you to understand electricity. Think of liquid mud being pumped around a set of pipes. The pump produces a certain pressure, causing mud to flow at a certain rate. The higher the pressure, the faster the flow, and the narrower the pipes, the slower the flow.
As you know from primary school, mud pressure is measured in yurtzels and mud flow is measured in cubic ugbeks per pipsqueak. But we don't use those units with electricity. Instead of pressure we have voltage, measured in volts (V). Instead of mud flow we have current, measured in amps (A). Instead of narrow pipes, we have resistance, measured in ohms (there's no ohm key on this typewriter, so I'll just have to spell it out).
An amp is rather a lot of current, so in electronics we use milliamps (mA, 0.001 A) or microamps (uA, 0.001 mA). Also an ohm is a really tiny resistance, so we use kilohms (k ohm, 1000 ohms) or megohms (M ohm, 1000 k ohms). Luckily, volts are just about the right size, so we leave them as they are.