[sdiy] Alternating dead current voltage??

[JH.]

> Volt, a Potential difference in electromotive force (really the potential
> energy per unit charge), is the potential to do something. Current, the
flow
> of unit charges per unit time, is the amount of fullfillment of this
potential.

For electricity, yes. But isn't it just the other way round when you look at
magnetism?
I don't claim to _fully_ understand Maxwell's equations, but it looks like
these
suggest a sort of symmetry where each of these physical values depend on one
another.

As for "current voltage" (the original question), I was quite amused when I
heard it for the
first time in German, "Stromspannung". It sounds terribly strange to the ear
of one who
deals with electronics day in day out. But then it occured to me that it's
not _only_ a clumsy
way of the uninitiated to talk about the subject of our profession, it
actually is a way
to discern it from other sorts of  "Spannung", like mechanische Spannung
(mechanical tension).
But that's just German - you clever English speaking people have put the
name of Volta,
(and the name of the unit, volts) into the name of the value, "voltage",
too.
Not that this would be unheard of in German, either: We know the word
"Voltzahl", but
now that is _realy_ sounding terrible to the ears of a technical person.
What a funny thing language can be.

Happy Christmas to all of you!

JH.