About the Electric Current Converter
Electronics work bounces between scales constantly. A microcontroller pin sources 20 mA, a USB port supplies 0.9 A, a house ring main is protected at 32 A, and a leakage specification might be quoted at 500 nA. Keeping those straight by counting zeros invites mistakes, so this converter does the shifting for you across nine current units.
The ampere has been defined since 2019 by fixing the elementary charge at 1.602176634 times ten to the minus nineteen coulombs, which makes one ampere a flow of about 6.24 times ten to the eighteen electrons every second. Everything from picoamperes to megaamperes is a plain decimal shift from there, so the conversions are exact rather than approximate.
Two older units are included for anyone reading pre SI literature. The abampere, also called the biot, equals ten amperes and comes from the electromagnetic CGS system. The statampere from the electrostatic system is roughly 333.6 picoamperes. Both appear in mid century physics papers and occasionally in magnetics texts. Paste a whole column of readings and each line converts independently, which suits a bench log or a datasheet table. Related electrical figures in watts belong on the Power Converter.
How to use
- Enter the current readings, one per line.
- Choose the unit they are written in.
- Choose the unit you want them expressed in.
- Copy the result, or download it as a text file for your notes.
Common questions
- How many milliamps are in an amp?
- One thousand. A 0.5 A supply is 500 mA.
- What current does a typical LED draw?
- Indicator LEDs usually run at 5 mA to 20 mA, which is 0.005 A to 0.02 A.
- What is an abampere?
- A CGS electromagnetic unit equal to exactly 10 amperes. It appears mainly in older physics and magnetics literature.
- Can I convert amps to watts here?
- No, that needs a voltage as well, since watts equal volts times amps. Convert the resulting wattage on the power tool instead.