Page "Ohm's law" Paragraph 57

Ohm's law has sometimes been stated as, " for a conductor in a given state, the electromotive force is proportional to the current produced.

" That is, that the resistance, the ratio of the applied electromotive force ( or voltage ) to the current, " does not vary with the current strength.

" The qualifier " in a given state " is usually interpreted as meaning " at a constant temperature ," since the resistivity of materials is usually temperature dependent.

Because the conduction of current is related to Joule heating of the conducting body, according to Joule's first law, the temperature of a conducting body may change when it carries a current.

The dependence of resistance on temperature therefore makes resistance depend upon the current in a typical experimental setup, making the law in this form difficult to directly verify.

Maxwell and others worked out several methods to test the law experimentally in 1876, controlling for heating effects.